Desperation Morale Blog

Winter Offensive 2012 Pictures

2012-01-16T18:50:00.002-05:00

Well, the 20th annual Winter Offensive ASL Tournament just concluded yesterday in Bowie, Maryland. For the 131 people who made the trek, it was a lot of fun, and a lot of ASL was played. Here are some pictures to commemorate that august event.


Three ASL-themed license plates right in a row! I must be in the right place!


Early arrivals. Only a few tables have even been set up, and no tablecloths.


That doesn't stop people from getting right into the action! Here's an already-intense Soviet-German scenario.


Eventually, MMP arrives. Brian and Perry start setting up their crack house.


By Thursday evening, this is what it looks like.


Here Desperation Morale supermodel Pete Shelling shows off the big release at Winter Offensive, the HASL module Festung Budapest.


ASLer Gary Trezza contemplates the contents of Festung Budapest. Sure, the map is pretty, but it's no Board 9.


Even the homeless transients from the nearby men's shelter stopped in to see what was happening at Winter Offensive.


Some people were playtesting the campaign game for the upcoming ASL Starter Kit historical module on Elst. Here is the map, in all of its polder-filled glory.


Festung Budapest, naturally, was very popular during the tournament.


Some more Buda-pestilence.


J.R. van Mechelen, in all his wisdom, decided to do Flying Turrets from the recent Bounding Fire Productions' Blood and Steel Kursk module. Here is his offboard set-up for the Soviets.


Chas Argent and Pete Shelling, no doubt playtesting some scenario goodness for you to lose at.


A shot from one of the scenarios I played, well into J126 Ugly Faces with Ray Woloszyn. My French were able to slow him down and cause enough casualties that by the time my British arrived and got into position, he would not be able to crack the nut. Fun scenario, though, and fun playing Ray.


Just a general shot of the tournament, probably Friday night.


Another general shot, looking 90 degrees to the right from my previous shot.


Desperation Morale supermodel Bret Hildebran displaying the other new release at Winter Offensive, the Bonus Pack #3, with two maps and a few scenarios, all by Pete Shelling.


My only "creative" shot, looking up admiringly at the phlegmatic face of J. R. Tracy. To really appreciate the effort put into this shot, you have to imagine a fat man squatting with a camera.


More Festung-ivities.


Back to Flying Turrets. The brown blog has moved!


A close-up


Parting Shot: Schwerpunkt's Tatra Salad

Balance-Testing the BattleSchool Precision Dice

2012-01-16T16:49:00.002-05:00

Last year, Chris Doary debuted some ASL themed precision dice; since then, he has added a few more to the mix. Although I have never been one to be attracted to the precision dice lure, I don't have much willpower where ASL themed items are concerned. Since he started offering them, I have acquired a number of them and last October I started to use them as my regular ASL dice, replacing the standard MMP dice I had been using forever.

However, I will say that from the very first ASLOK when the first dice appeared, I was concerned that the BattleSchool dice, despite ostensibly being precision dice (i.e., very finely balanced dice), were rolling low an awful lot.

It's hard to get a true measure of that just from observing the die results of normal ASL play, because the main feature of the Battleshool dice is that the 1-pip face is replaced by an image. As a result, the eye is immediately drawn it, more so than would be the case for an ordinary 1-pip face. And, since you'll basically be seeing at least one of those dice 11/36 of the time, psychologically, it could be easy to come away with the idea that they were rolling low a lot, especially when some of those 1s will be paired with 2s or 3s, when in fact, the dice were really rolling normally.

I have always considered myself a crappy luck sort of guy when it came to ASL, with a stormcloud hanging over me, but last ASLOK, my dice were overall pretty good (I did get really diced on one scenario). Between ASLOK and Winter Offensive, I only played a few times, but my dice were good in every one of those times. And this year at Winter Offensive, my dice were good a lot, and I really really diced one of my opponents.

All of this cumulatively had me quite worried about my dice. Were the Battleschool dice actually not as balanced as advertised? Could I be inadvertently using dice that are unbalanced in my favor? This really dug into my conscience on the drive home from Winter Offensive yesterday and I decided to test some Battleschool dice.

I pulled out two different Battleschool dice to test, and picked a standard MMP die as well, sort of as a control. I was originally going to do a 4th die, from an altogether different source, but my arm got really tired.

I utilized a chi-square test, with 600 rolls for each die. With that many rolls, you can get a reasonable idea if the die is balanced (obviously, given the nature of dice, you can never be 100% sure).

I was very relieved to discover that both of the Battleschool dice easily passed the test.

Interestingly, the one MMP die I tested badly failed the test and seemed to be unbalanced (and unbalanced the unfavorable way, to boot!). I would not want to be using that die!

Anyway, I have uploaded the results of my testing, if anybody wants to take a look. For those of us who have been wondering about the BattleSchool dice (and it seems that I have not been the only one), this should be somewhat reassuring.

Desperation Morale Website Update

2011-12-26T14:56:00.002-05:00

I have been getting a lot of questions recently about the status of the update of the World of ASL Compendium on the Desperation Morale website. I suppose an explanation is in order.

I am almost through with the update. I finished taking all the pictures and cropping and resizing them during the holiday weekend and today. I now have to insert the pictures into the new entries, go over all the entries for final revisions, do an entry for late arrival Winpack 2, upload them, and link check.

I have spent a number of weekends and several vacation days to do all this. The amount of ASL products released since September was just tremendous and it imposed a huge workload on me. Doing the update deprived me of a lot of time I could have used for playing, designing, or even (gasp) chores.

I may be able to have the update posted by Monday or Tuesday evening, assuming real life does not intervene.

However, I must say that I am at a crossroads regarding the World of ASL compendium. The flood of ASL products right now is such that maintaining the site as is represents a major burden for me. I don't know how long I could continue to do it without experiencing burnout.

As a result, I may have to revert to much shorter write-ups for the products than I have typically engaged in over the past five years. Some people may not care about this, but I know others will be disappointed. It's hard to see what else I can do. I haven't made any final decision now--that will probably come when the time comes for me to do another update. It is altogether strange to me that I am beginning to wish fewer products would come out.

Anyway, that's the latest. My best wishes to all of you for the new year.

Update: 12/27/2011: The Compendium is now updated.

The Phase Before Christmas

2011-12-22T17:32:00.000-05:00

‘Twas the phase before Christmas, when all through thehouse,

Not a leader was stirring, not even the Youse.

The PIATS were hung by the chimney up high,

In hopes that a Panther might come lumbering by.

The half-squads were nestled all snug in their trenches,

With visions of ASLOK and wine and some wenches.

And Bret in his camo and I in my greys

Had just settled down for a nice Rally Phase.

When just one hex over there arose such a clatter

I quickly Self-Rallied to see what was the matter.

Down to Ground Level I flew like a flash,

Declared Wall Advantage and readied a Dash.

The Full Moon on the breast of the new-fallen Snow

Gave a Night Vision Range of at least 4 or so.

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But an ungainly Sledge that was drawn by reindeer,

With an inherent driver, so likely and limber,

I knew in a moment it must be Saint Kibler.

More rapid than Marders his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:

“Now, Sisler! Now, Pleva! Now Rönnblom and Perry!

On, Argent! On, Grofaz! On, Siddhu and Sherry!

To the Czerniakow Bridgehead! To Aachen’s Pall!

Now Rout away! Routaway! Rout away all!

As small Flames that into wild Blazes turn

When they meet with a Gust in a frenzy to burn,

So up to the Rooftop the reindeer they flew,

With the sledge of support weapons, and ol’ Charlie, too.

And then I sniffed something that wasn’t quite coffee

But rather the smell of a Nahverteidigungswaffe.

As I Advanced in the building to check out the smell

I saw Charlie Kibler on the Inherent Stairwell.

He was dressed in Winter Camo from his head to his foot,

And his garb was blackened with Dispersed Smoke and some soot.

A bundle of Panzerfausts he had flung on his back,

And he looked like a Hero preparing to attack.

His boards, how they glittered! His SASLshow shiny!

His Red Oktober campaign game makes Barricades look tiny!

His droll little mouth was drawn up with conviction,

And the beard of his chin was as white as Mark Nixon.

A set of nice tweezers he held tight in his teeth,

And he sucked at the Handy-tak’ed tip for relief.

He had a dice cup and a nice little tower

That shook all his dice for at least half an hour.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf;

If he were a Commissar, he wouldn’t shoot you himself.

A glance at the ASOP and a check of VCs

Soon gave me to know I could now be at ease.

He spoke not a word, but soon went Berserk,

And dropped excess Portage Points, then turned with a jerk,

And laying his finger on his CMG,

And giving a nod, he declared ESB.

He sprang to his Sledge, to his team gave a cry

And away they all flew like a Stuka up high.

But I heard him exclaim, ere I lost LOS,

“Happy Christmas to all, and all gamers God bless.”

The Schwerpunkt Shortcut: Cheat or Genius?

2011-10-30T13:58:00.003-04:00

Take a look at these victory conditions:

The British win at game end if there are no Good Order German (non-vehicular crew) MMC(s) in any multi-hex building on/between hexrows H and P.
The Germans win at game end if they occupy two or more buildings with a Good Order MMC.
The Republicans win at game end if there are no Good Order Nationalist MMC(s) in the following buildings: sW4; sBB2; qY8; qS9.
The Americans win at game end if there are no Good Order German MMC(s) in building rW7 and no Good Order German MMC(s) on any hexes of Hill vH7.
The Russians win at game end if they have a Good Order (non-vehicular crew) MMC in [four or more] of the stone building/rubble hexes.
The Germans win at game end if they have at least one unbroken German (non-vehicular crew) MMC(s) in [two or more] of the following buildings: 63T5, 63W5, 59V6, 59V7.

What do these conditions have in common? Two things. First and most obvious, they all share the same nature (even though some are written from the defender's perspective rather than the attacker's). Second, they all come from the two most recent products from Schwerpunkt: Schwerpunkt Volume 17 and Rally Point 6.

Actually, they represent what seems to be a growing trend over the past several years in Schwerpunkt scenarios: eschewing control of buildings or hexes/locations for victory conditions and relying instead on a variation of the "no Good Order MMC" provision.

It is true that the "no Good Order MMC" provision in a sense dates back all the way to the earliest days of Schwerpunkt. If you look at Volumes 1 and 2, it is fairly common. However, in many of those situations, the provision was for an area (like "between hexes V and BB" or "on any hill hex") rather than for specific buildings. Recent Schwerpunkts have kept the tendency to use the area variation of the provision, but also seem to have increased the use of this provision in lieu of building control provisions.

Why would a designer do this? For one thing, it is easier to break units in a building, or engage them in Melee, than it is to actually control the building itself, because there could be a million broken units in the building and it wouldn't matter. One could posit that use of this provision over a building control condition shaves roughly half a turn from every scenario in which it is used.

Moreover, with regard to Schwerpunkt scenarios specifically, the vast majority of such actions are designed according to the "Schwerpunkt" style, which in essence forces an attacker to attack aggressively or risk running out of time by the end of the scenario. There is little room in a typical Schwerpunkt scenario for a more cautious attack, or for "indirect approaches" that might take a little more time to complete. More often than not, the scenario time limits mandate a fast and "straight up the gut" approach.

With this fact in mind, one can see how building control can throw a spanner into the works in a Schwerpunkt scenario, especially if the building is a multi-hex or multi-level building. After all, a single broken half squad in a corner of a building is enough to deny control, and might necessitate that extra half turn to clear out. But Schwerpunkt designers are loathe to give players that turn. As a result, increasingly often, it seems, Schwerpunkt scenarios have victory conditions that focus on the presence of Good Order enemy troops in buildings rather than on building control, in order to allow them to lop off that last turn without drastically affecting play balance.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? In one sense, it may be a good thing, particularly so since it may help eliminate some of the gamiest situations where building control is denied, such as that last broken half squad meaning the difference between defeat and victory.

Are there any ill effects? On its own, there may not be. However, combined with another common feature in Schwerpunkt scenarios (and fairly common generally, one should note), there are some potential problems. That feature is the feature of ending a scenario on a half turn rather than at the end of a game turn.

Here is how those two can work together to create a potential problem. Many Schwerpunkt scenarios have few enough turns that any significant delay, self-imposed or otherwise, on an attacker may mean that the attacker has to do that desperate last-turn dash in order to get to the building in question and break its occupants or engage them in melee. If they cannot physically reach a defender to engage them in melee, they have to stand outside the building and attempt to break them (with Advancing Fire, no less). And a defender can defend in fairly gamey way by just making a single unit inaccessible to attackers. There could be five broken units and a Good Order half squad in or near a building, but if the broken units block attackers from advancing into the half squad's hex for CC, the defender will likely win, barring some incredibly lucky Advancing Fire shot. It may be good tactics for the defender to set up that wall of brokies, but it is still, in the end, just as gamey as holding onto control of a building with that broken 6+1 leader.

Since I am not crazy about adding another attacker turn to a scenario just to be able to mop up a building, I guess personally I don't have a problem with the "No Good Order" type of VC provision itself. However, I think that in a lot of scenarios in which it is used, those scenarios would be less gamey if they ended on a game turn rather than at the end of the attacker player turn. This way, the defender still has to survive a round of Defensive Fire without breaking before being able to claim victory.

What do you think?

ASLOK for First-Timers

2011-10-15T15:45:00.001-04:00

Having just survived my 11th ASLOK, I thought I might write a few words about ASLOK generally, largely for the benefit of people who have never attended ASLOK and are wondering whether they might enjoy it. I want to do this because the bottom line is that you probably would enjoy it. I hope that, in the comments section, other ASLOK veterans will contribute their own thoughts, impressions, and advice as well.

So let me begin by explaining what ASLOK is. ASLOK is short for ASL Oktoberfest, the longest-running and largest ASL tournament in the world. The ASLOK that just finished was the 26th year of the tournament, if you can believe it. It is held the first week of October each year in Cleveland, Ohio. It is essentially eight days long (more on that below), but you can be there for any amount of time, even a single day. Only the real die-hards and idiots (like me) show up there for the long haul. ASLOK was started by Bill "Fish" Connor and Darryl "Action" Burke, two long time Squad Leader enthusiasts who made the leap to ASL immediately. The first few years it was held in Youngstown, Ohio, but then someone said, "Dude, do you realize that we are in YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO?" and the tournament was immediately moved to the Cleveland area, where it has been ever since. Mark Nixon ran it for many years, with the able assistance of "Wild Bill" Hayward, then turned it over to Bret Hildebran. Bret and Bill have been doing an incredible job running the tournament for past several years.

Attendance at ASLOK these days basically runs in the 150-175 attendee range, though few show up for its entire length. When ASLOK first started, it was only a few days long. But people started showing up early to get in an extra day's worth of gaming and the tournament was extended to accommodate this. Then people still started showing up a day early so it was extended AGAIN! Lather, rinse, repeat, and now the tournament is basically eight days long. Let's say that next October 1st is a Saturday. That will be the first day of the event and it will last all the way until Sunday, October 9th. And yes, a few people actually will start playing on the evening of September 30, but the day the actual gaming area opens up is on that first Saturday morning.

Many of the people who stay the longest come from abroad--to them, Cleveland is a geeky Mecca that beckons to them. It is not at all unusual to find people at ASLOK from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Great Britain, Sweden, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Other countries who have sent folks in recent years include Denmark, Italy, and Belgium. I am sure I am forgetting others. One of the neat aspects of ASLOK is to be able to play fellow ASL fans from around the world. In fact, for some years now, one of the official features of ASLOK has been a "U.S. vs. the World" tournament that runs from the first Saturday through Tuesday. Organizers keep track of who wins when someone from the U.S. plays someone from abroad. The best U.S. individual record and the best foreign individual record each get plaques, too (I have one!). However, in all its history, the U.S. has never beaten the World! Those foreign bastards, infiltrating our borders and winning our wargames!

So let's say you are thinking of coming. One question to ask is when should you come? If you have the time and money, as well as the stamina, obviously the week-long option is a good one. I've been doing that every year since 2003 and have enjoyed doing it. But that may not be for you. A lot of people might suggest that if you could only come for a few days to come late in the week, when it is most full and you arguably get the "full ASLOK experience." That's certainly true enough. On the other hand, coming early has its own benefits--you won't be pressed for space and have the luxury to spread out your stuff. It's also a great opportunity to play something special, like a big HASL scenario. Plus the place is generally less raucous.

If time and money are not issues, stamina is the main one. How much do you really want to play ASL? You need to ask yourself that question, because you don't want to plan for a week's stay, then find yourself burned out after three days. So, first, ask yourself, "Do I have the ASL bug?" If the idea of playing ASL day after day (possibly in losing efforts, remember) gets your juices flowing a lot, then consider a longer stay. If you have attended a shorter, weekend tournament or ASL event and been left wanting more, then ASLOK is for you. The most hard-core players will try to get three scenarios a day in, the whole week long. Frankly, I don't know how they can do it; my mind would be frazzled at that pace. Here's my own personal strategy for a long stay at ASLOK: I try to pace myself, to two scenarios a day (unless I get into the finals of a mini-tournament, which will usually necessitate a third scenario). Sometimes, typically later in the week, I may just do one large scenario, then schmooze the rest of the day. It's good to take a break here or there; perhaps a few hours to watch a pro or college football game or even (ugh) a baseball game, perhaps to go out for dinner and/or drinks with some other ASLOKers. If you have a friend or relative in the area, taking an evening off during the week to see them can be a nice "pause that refreshes."    So this last ASLOK, I played 13 scenarios (it would have been 14 except for an unforeseen circumstance) over eight days. Very fun, very relaxing. You don't want to force yourself to do anything; pick a length that you like. My first ASLOK, in 2001, I just went Thursday-Sunday. The next year, I expanded it a couple of days. By my third ASLOK, I was a "full ASLOK" kind of guy. But that's me. Find your own comfort zone. Also, if you know other people who are attending, you may want to coordinate with them.

That leads us to another aspect--managing cost. There are travel costs to and from ASLOK, for those not lucky enough to be local, the cost of 3-9 days hotel stay, food and drink costs, and, of course, the cost of any ASL thing you might want to buy while there. It can be very expensive, especially for someone traveling from abroad.   First of all, plan in advance. Well in advance, if you are international. Get those cheap flights. Don't pay extra to bring all your gear (see below). Second, consider sharing a room with someone or more than one person. This is common, and dependent only on factors like fartiness and snoriness. If you know other people coming you can suggest an arrangement; some people may also post "roommate wanted" notices on ASL forums like Consimworld or Gamesquad.   Keep an eye out, or post your own. The food at the current hotel, the airport Holiday Inn, is actually pretty reasonably priced, and they typically run sandwich specials for ASLOKers. There is a very convenient Subway nearby for other cheap eats. Some people with access to a car sometimes bring their own sandwiches, snacks, sodas. But luckily, ASLOK is not too expensive in the food department. There are some other nearby hotels, but I don't think any are cheaper than the Holiday Inn (which actually provides a pretty decent convention rate). If you have a car there are some cheaper hotels a few exits down the highway, which is also a possibility for ASLOKERs on a budget. Google maps can help you there.

Is ASLOK for you? That's typically a question that beginners and novices ask themselves. Let me just say that ASLOK is typically very friendly to new players, with one caveat, which I'll explain. I'll give a personal example. Though I played Squad Leader "back in the day," for all practical purposes, I did not really start playing ASL until 2001. Even then, it was only against a single, similarly inexperienced opponent. When I went to my first ASLOK, it was only about 6-7 months after my first ASL scenario and I probably had not played more than 12 or 13 times at most before then, all against that one opponent. So I was understandably nervous about going to ASLOK. When I walked in, almost the first gaming table I saw had two grizzled old players going at it with each other using counters that had been used so much they were so faded that the numbers could barely be read. You can bet I peed a little right there. However, from the time I walked in and introduced myself to Mark Nixon, every single person I met was incredibly inviting and friendly. Newbie though I was, I had a great time. I went 1-6, of course, and lucky to get that 1, but it was awesome. At some point late in the week they will even offer, if needed, a little session called "Maneuvers" or some such, to help people learn (or remember) ASL. Are you a Starter Kit player? I am reasonably sure that you would be able to find people willing to play the Starter Kit with you (I would, for example; I am happy to).

Here's the caveat to all that, though. The people who go to ASLOK do so out of a love for ASL. They may be relatively new to it, or grizzled veterans of 20+ years experience, but they do share that love for ASL. That's one reason why they may be willing to play a rank newbie--out of wanting to help someone else develop that love and affection for ASL. You'll find people happy to play you, heck, happy to help teach you--as long as you are willing to put in that effort to learn ASL. If, however, you are pretty sure that ASL is not a love for you, or not likely to become one, then you might want to reconsider going. If you are ambivalent about ASL, then you would be asking someone else to put themselves out in order to teach you or help you learn with no corresponding gain for them or the hobby as a whole. Similarly, if you play Starter Kit and you have pretty much decided that you will only be playing Starter Kit and never advancing to ASL, then ASLOK may not be for you. However, if you view Starter Kit as the first step of many, you'll find many welcoming people.

One other issue to consider for international folks: the language issue. Basically, English is going to be the language at ASLOK. You need to be able to speak English well enough to make yourself understood in gaming situations. You don't have to be 100% fluent, but you have to have a basic knowledge. Reading knowledge of English is good, of course, but people need to speak while playing ASL. I personally have not met anybody at ASLOK who did not have that bare minimum of English. Second, you need to know how to play ASL. The worse your English is, the better your ASL should be, because it would be very difficult for someone else to explain ASL things to you in English. If you can, try to find other people from your country who have gone to ASLOK and ask them about their experiences with language. The nice thing is that most ASLers will be very patient with you if English is not your first language. At least learn a few curse words for when you break a weapon. I suggest the following phrases: "fucking motherfucker" and "Christ on a crutch." You'll go far.

What should you bring? Plenty of people will be bringing tons of gear, so if space is at a premium, like if you are flying to ASLOK, you can be more selective. You can always use your opponent's gear (this limits your opponents to people with gear, of course), or bum some off a friend (if applicable). In descending order of priority, here is what you need to bring: 1) rulebook and charts (always bring), 2) Dice, 3) Dice tower or dice cup to roll dice in (free range rolling is DEFINITELY frowned on at ASLOK), 4) scenarios you are interested in playing, 5) counters of common nationalities (german/soviet/US). Beyond that, bringing additional counters and maps/overlays is gravy. Obviously, if you have the space, you should bring all your basic travelling gear (by this I mean you don't have to bring HASLs or other things you will clearly never play, etc.).

If you are traveling from Europe and have extra luggage space, one possibility to help defray your travel costs is to buy one or more RAACO handy boxes in Europe (http://cpc.farnell.com/1/3/raaco-handy-box, for example), bring them with you, and sell them in America. Many ASLers prefer these for counter storage, but they are not sold in America. Bring some and you will probably find buyers. Remember, ASLers prefer the RAACO A75 (115759) INSERT and the RAACO A78 (115766) INSERT, so make sure your trays are filled with those.

That's stuff to bring. What about taking stuff back? What can you expect? Well, if you love getting ASL gear, ASLOK is usually the place for you. First of all, there are usually annual scenario packs that debut at ASLOK every year, so you are pretty much guaranteed to get stuff that still has that new scenario smell. Currently, the Friendly Fire Pack, the Dezign Pak, Schwerpunkt (magazine/pack), and Rally Point (pack) regularly debut at ASLOK (though Rally Point may go to every other year from now on).   Usually there are reps from third party publishers such as Bounding Fire Productions or Le Franc Tireur, who may have things to sell if there is something new. Recently, Chris and Helen Doary have been debuting ASL-themed precision dice at ASLOK and that may continue. Usually Dave Lamb, a Critical Hit rep, will have an array of recent Critical Hit offerings for sale. Sometimes dealers like Alex Key or Larry Zoet may come with ASL packs old and/or new to sell (though you never know if this will be the case for sure). And you never know what surprising new thing may debut at ASLOK--that's frequently the most exciting, when there is some unexpected new piece of gear announced. That's when players look up and eye each other and say, "Umm, you want to take a quick break?" Note the absence of MMP. Sometimes an MMP person will show up, typically Chas Argent or Perry Cocke, but they won't be bringing stuff to sell. So don't expect to stock up on official ASL stuff unless you are lucky enough to get something off a dealer. MMP tends to debut stuff at their own tournament in January, Winter Offensive.

In addition to actual ASL products, often you can find other stuff on which you can place your grubby little fingers. You may be able to buy a dice tower, or a pair of tweezers or various other gewgaws and bric-a-brac that people have made for ASL.

What does ASLOK offer? The coolest thing about ASLOK is how many ways you can have fun there. First, there is the main tournament, called The Grofaz (google it), which runs from Thursday to Saturday. This is the big deal for the veteran high-skill players, and who ever wins the Grofaz is basically the unofficial ASL champion of the world for that year. Anybody can take part in it; the nature of it, though, is that essentially if you have won loss (and absolutely if you have two), you are out of it. So you don't necessarily have to commit yourself to the Grofaz for those last few days. You can just play it by ear.

In addition to The Grofaz, there is also the US vs the World tournament, mentioned above. And from Wednesday through Saturday, there are each day a variety of three-round 8-player single-elimination mini-tournaments, typically on different themes (France 1940, molotov cocktails, Tiger tanks, Night rules, you name it). Each of these gives you an opportunity to win some "wood" (as the plaques are called) and a valuable cash prize (well, ixnay on the aluablevay part). Theoretically, if you take part in the US vs the World, a mini-tournament each day, and the Grofaz, you can come back loaded with awards. You smug bastard. If you want to do the minis, plan in advance--you need to sign up for the mini themes you want well in advance of the tournament (eight slots fill up fast). If you want to be in a mini, you'll get in one, but if you don't do it in advance you may have no choice as to what theme it is. For US vs the World and the Grofaz, scenarios are completely open--people can play whatever they want to against each other. For the minis, players are given small lists of scenarios to choose from (usually there are extra copies of the scenarios floating around for someone who did not bring them with him).

However, ASLOK is much more than that. Many people don't engage in so-called competitive play at all, but simply show up to play. I tend to be that type of person. I will play in the US vs the World because I am an early arrival and I will naturally play some non-Americans. I typically can force myself to do about one mini-tournament--but because they start at 8am sharp, it's difficult for me to rouse myself that early. I usually eschew the Grofaz because by the end of the week I am usually in the process of ratcheting down my ASL intensity, not ratcheting it up.

What do you do instead of "competitive" play? Whatever the heck you want! Most of my games are just flat out open games against an available opponent, where we find a scenario that's cool and play it, may the best man win. Often people may pre-arrange games, especially if you and a long-lost gaming buddy are reuniting at ASLOK, or if there is someone you don't get to play very much whom you'd like to. Do you want to spend a day or two or three playing some huge monster thing--you can often find someone who will do it with you, especially if you advertise in advance. I once saw two guys come in from San Francisco and basically do nothing but play The Last Bid against each other the whole time. I don't think they even finished. But they had a blast. Another thing you can do is play scenarios with multiple people on each side. If you like playtesting, there will definitely be designers and publishers looking for people to help them playtest. You may well get a chance to see scenarios, or even maps and counters, before they are released!

When can you play? Whenever the fuck you want, if you'll pardon my French! Do you and someone else want to have a marathon all night session of ASL? Go right ahead. From Tuesday on, the gaming room is open 24 hours a day, every day, thanks in large part to voluntary night owl Bill Hayward.

Basically, if it is ASL, you can do it there.

What if it's not ASL? You can find, especially later in the week, the occasional Euro game or other mindless game (Zombies, for example) late in the evening, as players blow off some steam. But don't come to ASLOK expecting that you can play Lock n Load or ATS or Gettysburg '88 or whatever. That ain't what it is about.

ASLOK is very informal, very friendly. But there are some basic etiquette rules that are useful to keep in mind:

1) Bathe early and often. You may be full of energy, despite having been on the plane or in airports for 16 hours while trying to get to Cleveland, but before you jump into that game, take a shower first. With 150+ gamers crammed into a room, it might get malodorous of people don't hop into those showers. If you are wondering whether or not you need one, you probably do.

2) Bring something to roll dice in. And I don't mean the box top for Beyond Valor. Get a dice tower or a dice cup. You'll find tons of them on-line or on e-bay or even at your local gaming shop. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my stacks of counters by rolling dice on the table that bounce onto the gameboard.

3) Bring some scenarios you are interested in playing. Really, make an effort. Some people will just sit down and have no suggestions for scenarios at all, thinking they are being flexible, when really they are just putting the burden on the other person to suggest something. Bring at least 20 scenarios that you are interested in playing. Maybe you'll get some played, maybe not. But you'll have made an effort for your opponent.

4) Don't be a sore loser. Look, we all get diced from time to time. Sometimes the dice really screw us over. And it is entirely okay, especially late in the game in a tense scenario, to expostulate briefly at yet another die roll. Even to curse a bit. But don't yell, don't slam your hand, don't throw dice, don't endlessly complain. Get it out of your system and go back to playing. And pick your battles. If you curse at the first bad die roll, your opponent is in for a long, un-fun afternoon. Think about the effect your behavior might have on your opponent, who has done nothing worse than be lucky.

5) Shaking? Some people hold that you should shake your opponent's hand before a scenario and wish him good luck, and if you lose, quickly shake your opponent's hand afterward and say good game. To me, this is unncessary--what is important to me is that, however you communicate it, you are friendly to your opponent.

6) What to do with a big dick. I'm not referring to your own, but to an opponent who really tries to screw you over. Let me say that, thankfully, such people are extremely rare in ASL. But even though they are very few in number, there are a few Big Dicks out there in the world. I am happy to say that in my 650+ scenario playings, I have only run into one person who fit that category. If someone tells you on the opening turn that you've lost the scenario because you rolled the wind change DR before you set up your reinforcements (that actually happened once to a friend of mine), just say "good game" and find another opponent as soon as possible. Look at it this way. You may have had to spend some small amount of time with a Big Dick, but you will have the long-term pleasure for the rest of your life of telling the rest of the world exactly how big a Dick he really was.   Just find a normal regular human opponent as soon as possible and wash that away. Again, you will likely never experience this. But if you do, heed my advice, grasshopper. Don't get mad, get away.

7) Whose table? ASL naturally tends to divide itself between Nesters and Nomads. The Nesters like to set up in one spot and play all their scenarios there. The Nesters par excellence may even bring lamps and laptops and music; this past ASLOK, one person even brought furniture. The Nomads travel around from table to table. They don't care where they are. Even if they brought their gear, it may be lumped against a wall until needed. Ideally, Nesters play Nomads and everybody is happy. When two Nesters meet, however, it's sort of like hermit crab sex. Everybody wants to do the nasty but no one wants to leave their shell (I really have no knowledge of actual hermit crab sex. Just go with me on this). If you are a Nester, just try to gauge how disturbing and nervous you would actually make this person if you insisted he leave his nest. If it looks like he would collapse, then be the bigger crab and go to his nest.

8) IFT vs. IIFT. IFT is the default; if someone wants to play with the IFT, don't try to argue them out of it.

9) Dice mishaps. Try to establish before the game or very early on that if a die ends up cocked, or if one flies out of the dice tower or whatever, then all dice will be re-rolled. Don't wait until that crucial die roll to bring it up.

10) HELP YOUR OPPONENT SORT HIS COUNTERS. When the game is over, if you have been playing with your opponent's counters, help him put the counters away. Do NOT walk away. Even if you have to piss like crazy, stay there and help him put the counters away. This is major ASL etiquette.

11) Before playing a scenario, go over the scenario card with your opponent. Make sure that both of you fully understand the victory conditions, all the set up and reinforcement areas, and all the SSRs. Do NOT hope that your opponent misconstrues a VC or SSR. It will only cause trouble later. Be on the same page.

12) Give your opponent a break. Don't be an asshole about little timing issues.   Did he forget to try to fix that LMG? Just let him do it even if it is half way through his prep fire phase. Here's a good rule of thumb: if you did not have to make any decision or take any action based on what he did or did not do, it is usually okay to let him do it, even if slightly out of sequence. Remember, it's just a game and if you win, you are not made King of the World. You are no better a strategist because you didn't let your opponent pick up that dropped SW he forgot about during the Rally Phase.

The bottom line is that you are there to have fun and so are your opponents. Most of the time that's what will happen, too. ASLOK is a tremendous amount of fun. If you've never gone, consider going. If you have the ASL itch, this is the best place to scratch it. Plus, one of the fun things about ASL is meeting new people, and if you don't show up, how can I meet you?

I hope to see you there!

ASL Oktoberfest (ASLOK) 2011 AAR, Part II

2011-10-15T13:56:00.000-04:00

Hallo, boys and girls; here is the second half of my ASLOK AAR. As you will remember, your hero bravely battled back from an 0-2 start to win 5 games in a row and recover a measure of his self-respect.

That takes us to Wednesday morning, when I matched up against Brian Brown, another member, like Stan Jackson, of our informal Ohio-Kentucky ASLer gaming group. Brian has only been with the group a couple of years, and as I don't play with the group as often as I used to, we have only played a handful of times. But every time has been fun and Brian is a good opponent, and someone who has been quickly getting up the ASL learning curve. We decided to play a scenario from the new Friendly Fire pack, FrF54 (KNIL Before the Emperor), a 1942 Dutch-Japanese scenario (KNIL is the acronym for the Royal Netherlands East India Army, basically). This scenario is a fairly large one that will have multiple actions going on at the same time. The Japanese objective is a town; they have to control 7 or more stone building hexes in it. One force of Japanese troops--8 Elite squads with good leaders and toys--has to force its way across a stream and into the town. They are later reinforced by 5 more squads (1st line). Meanwhile, a small group of 4-4-7s and such can enter on one or both of the flanks of the town. The defending Dutch (who oddly, are portrayed with Axis minor troops!) have 3.5 5-3-7 squads and an armored car that set up HIP in the vicinity of the bridge. In the town, they have 7 3-3-6 conscript squads. They get 5 3-4-7 squads and two more armored cars to reinforce the town.

Brian's first task was to get across the bridge. Here he got held up a bit. He only moved one mortar in position to go for smoke the next turn (saving the other mortar for later in the game, which in retrospect was a mistake). That mortar didn't get smoke. He also didn't have much luck initially in flushing out my HIP units. However, he was helped that my armored car, very strategically positioned, broke its CMG on its very first shot. In any case, he had to force the bridge the hard way and took some casualties doing it, though not as many as you might think he would. However, one of my 5-3-7 squads ended up holding him up for quite a while, while 2 5-3-7s that eventually broke some how managed to actually get rallied and were in the action for the end game in the town, which turned out to be important. I think the main thing, though, that decided the scenario was that, once he was across the bridge, Brian did not act as decisively as he probably needed to--those forces had to start putting pressure on the town fast, but they were just slow to get into the action. As a result, in the end game, Brian was forced to do a last rush for the buildings, with predictable results. It's kind of a good lesson of the friction of war, how little events can add up in various ways to separate, slow down, and hinder an attacking force. But it was fun playing Brian and I enjoyed it. Plus, I was now 6-2 and had won six games in a row.

Alas, that was not to last, thanks to the worst scenario I played all week. That evening, I played Canadian ASLer John McDiarmid for the first time in a playing of another recent From the Cellar scenario, FT164 (Guts Are Not Enough), a Japanese-less PTO scenario featuring the British versus the Axis minor Burmese Independence Army, represented mostly by 3-3-6 squads with an ELR of 2. This is a small, quick playing scenario. The British have only 8 second line squads, supported by a tiny mortar and two carriers (one of them a mortar carrier). However, the Burmese have 3 3-4-7 squads and 9 3-3-6 squads, three 0-leadership leaders, and 2 LMG. The British may not declare no quarter against them, which may be one of their biggest liabilities, as it turns out. The battle is basically over the hut overlay slapped onto Board 38; the British must control all hut hexes. So the Burmese have +1 TEM at best, and thanks to the huts, they will basically never regain concealment once they lose it. Essentially, there is a brief battle in the initial British attack, as there is some open ground to cross, unless the British get very lucky with smoke, but after that, the Burmese will basically just be looking for adjacent or down shots to take, while oozing around the huts to protect themselves, if possible, by adding a hindrance here or there. They can't really afford to stack because a lucky shot could take out a whole stack. In this scenario, I was the Burmese. John launched an aggressive attack with his tiny force and as a result suffered some early casualties (and got very lucky that he didn't suffer an even worse fate to more units). John's reaction to those early setbacks was a bit surprising; it was more or less the reaction of a player late in the scenario who had been getting bad luck all scenario long, rather than someone still on the first player turn. I thought it might be a long unpleasant scenario if he was going to be getting that hot all game long. However, I needn't have worried; that was the only bad luck he got all scenario long. He consistently rolled very low, which in low TEM against low ELR conscripts, pretty much spells doom. But even leaving that aside, it was just not fun for the defender. The scenario itself may well be balanced, I can't say, but the defender has very few decisions to make, very little to move, and mostly will simply be trying to maintain concealment as long as possible. I can't recommend the scenario to anyone. I didn't mind breaking my winning streak (I was now 6-3), but I did not like the fact that I had broke it on a scenario that just was not fun to play. It is best suited for solitaire play, I think.

Luckly, the next day I was able to get that bad taste out of my mouth. Mike Faulkner of Schwerpunkt fame had prevailed upon me to playtest a scenario of his with him on Thursday morning, and I agreed. You will probably see it next year; it is a largish Spanish Civil War scenario that will probably end up being titled A Graveyard for My Bed or something similar. This scenario features a Spanish Nationalist force (using elite and first line Allied minor counters) accompanied by some Pz Is attacking that Board 63 hill-town. They need to take a key building in that town and also the graveyard on the hill. That graveyard is a bitch, though, as it is full of trenches and units in the area are fanatic. Plus, it turns out, there's a 9-2 leader there. The Spanish Republicans are represented by Soviet counters and depict a Canadian International Brigade--with the interesting tidbit that there is a Canadian commissar in the game (who will shoot you in the back of the neck in the most polite way imaginable). The Canadians get a bunch of reinforcements but they may be interdicted if the Nationalists can take the hill-town fast enough. This was the very first playtest of this scenario, and you never know what will happen in such a playing--the scenario could even turn out to be fundamentally broken or unplayable. However, happily, that is not what happened here. I took the Nationalists and Mike the Republicans and the scenario played very well. There were some obvious tweaks to be made but it was clear that the scenario dynamics were fundamentally sound. I think it will be a very fun scenario. By the way, I ended up winning, and though it will have to have an asterisk as a playtest scenario, I was now 7-3 and had washed away the bad taste of the previous scenario.

That scenario took us a while to play and so it was the only one I played that day, basically schmoozing in the evening. On Friday I also only played one scenario. I matched up against Andrea Pagni, the first Italian ASLer to come to ASLOK, but hopefully only the first of many. He was a very friendly person and fun to play against. We played yet another Schwerpunkt scenario, SP164 (Tanks But No Tanks), from a few years ago. This is a 1939 Polish-Soviet scenario. I took the attacking Soviets; Andrea defended with the Poles. Basically, I had to take 3 of 4 buildings. I started with 14 squads (mostly 1st line) and three T-26 M33 (crappy little tanks with no MG). He started with 12 squads (half Green, the other half elite or first line), 2 37mm AT guns, a lot of MG, and an 81mm MTR. He would later get a platoon of reinforcements that would essentially come up behind me and might threaten the one easy building for me to take. I would get 6 squads of reinforcements, including a 9-2 leader and 2 DC, accompanied by two BT-5 M34, that could enter pretty much anywhere along the edges of the forward half board.

My attack started off pretty well, and I was up on Andrea very quickly, but things went to hell very shortly after that. His dice were amazingly hot. Every roll seemed to have a 1 in it somewhere. I soon started suffering casualties at an alarming rate, which really affected my options. At one point, I only had two squads in good order at the schwerpunkt of my attack. If it were not for the fact that I was consistently able to rally units and get them back into the fight, I would have had no chance at all. Moreover, I had to play fairly conservatively, at least until my reinforcements could get up. Realistically, I was really hurting before the scenario was even half over. I did get a momentary boost in my spirits after he entered his reinforcements. My reinforcements followed his. Essentially, I had three practical options. Enter along a flank but face lots of open ground at a time when I had few casualties to spare, or enter behind his reinforcements and go right up the middle with them. Looking at how he had positioned his units, I realized he had left them vulnerable, or at least potentially so. Through some clever maneuvering, in a single turn, I managed to kill the entire platoon--only his 9-1 leader survived (though it did take out a BT-5 M34). That gave me enough hope to carry on. However, his low die rolling continued (you know you are being diced when your opponent actually apologizes for a roll!). In the end, I had to make a hated last turn rush for the victory areas, with predictable results. Andrea had really diced me, something I think he would fully admit, but he had a good set up and a solid game plan, so he deserves credit for that regardless. Anyway, I had fun playing him and I hope he comes back to ASLOK in the future, and brings some friends, too.

After that, I went out to dinner with the Schwerpunkt guys--they very graciously treated me--and then schmoozed for a bit. I figured I would get two games in on Saturday then go home Sunday morning.

My first Saturday game ended up being against Sam Tyson of Bounding Fire Productions fame. Sam's a very good player. We ended up playing a scenario from the new Friendly Fire Pack, FrF53 (Raid into the Reich), which features a rare Polish 1939 attack. In this scenario, played on board 2a, the Poles must control two buildings (one of which is no mean feat to take) and eliminate/capture two wagons. That's four different objectives they must accomplish. They don't have a lot of forces to do it with. They start with 5 4-5-8 squads, a MMG, and two TKS tankettes. Any of their forces may enter as cavalry. They get 7 more 4-5-8 squads and a DC (I wanted to throw it from the horse but that didn't happen) which can enter on the same edge on Turn 2, along that edge or a flank on turn 3, and/or along the other flank on turn 4. The defending Germans have 9 4-4-7 squads, a MMG, ATR, 50mm MTR, 12 AP mine factors, 2 Wire counters and 3 Trenches. So the Poles clearly have their work cut out for them.

This was a scenario of two halves. The first half of the scenario, nothing went right for me. I suffered a lot of casualties, had snipers, got bogged in bad places, you name it. His MMG was really deadly and got rate a lot. With very mobile cavalry and forces entering on the flanks, you'd think I'd be able to do some interesting stuff, but he had me bottled up pretty well. Halfway through the scenario I had not even taken the forward building yet, much less the other three objectives. It was too soon to give up the game but I basically didn't think I had a chance to win. But then things began to chance. First, my elite forces finally started acting elite and passing a morale check here and there. I got my TKS unbogged and finally into the action. And I realized that his defense of the rear building was flawed--it was really set up more to defend against a forward attack than a flanking attack. I noticed a clever route where I could move right up to the building essentially unseen by the defenders, thanks to in-season orchards. Only one unit farther away could see them and in the end its fire was ineffective. Thus I was able to get up to the building, get off my horsies, and advance into the building, which eventually doomed it. Moreover, he set up one of his wagons in a gully next to the building, on the (reasonable enough) theory that the defenders could also protect it. But it actually meant that a second objective was also achievable to me. So as I went into the end game, I realized that I actually had a chance to get all four objectives. With my flanking force I could capture the back building and kill that wagon. I was also going to be able to get the front building, which by that point only had a half squad left defending it. The bitch was going to be that last wagon; he had a host of guys around it, anchored by that demonic MMG. However, as I looked at the situation, I realized I had a chance. Because I had finally gotten my last TKS back into action, I had a chance to bypass sleaze the MMG. If I could soak up some fire from the other nearby units, I actually had some units in the vicinity of the front building that, if they cx'ed, could get adjacent to that wagon. So I sleazed the MMG, which itself soaked up some fire from the other units. Another squad or so soaked up more fire. This mean that my CXing units from far away could actually get adjacent to the wagon without even the chance of enemy fire. And that's what happened. I was able to eliminate the second wagon, which meant that on his last player turn, in order to win, Sam would have to take back one of the two buildings. One was physically out of this reach, and the other almost so, and in the end he couldn't do it. I managed to hang on just long enough for my luck to turn and for opportunities to present themselves. So, kids, the lesson is, don't give up. Anyway, it was really hard fought scenario and I was now 8-4 heading into my last scenario.

The last scenario turned out to be against British ASLer Dave Ramsey, attending his first ASLOK. He was a fun opponent (and almost stereotypically polite!). We played a Melee Pack scenario that had been on my play list for several years, MP15 (Just a Bit Outside). This is a smallish PTO scenario in which the Japanese are on the attack in Burma against the Americans (Merrill's Marauders). The Japanese start off with 7 squads, 2 crews/MMGs, 2 LMT, a MTR, a 10-0 and a 9-0. On Turns 2 and 3 they get almost identical platoon-sized reinforcement groups, one of which will enter on one side on turn 2 and the other of which will enter on the other side on turn 3. The defending Americans have 9.5 elite squads, 2 MMG, foxholes aplenty, a 9-2, an 8-0, and a 7-0. They also get 80mm battalion mortar OBA with automatic first black card and a radio that automatically repairs itself--but the trick is that the OBA starts off automatically inaccurate and only becomes more accurate as the scenario goes on. So the Japanese have a good chance of being free from OBA early on, but in the end game it is another matter. To win, the Japanese have to get around/through the American jungle/hill position (overlay 2) and on the other side of the stream. They must at least equal the number of American CVP on the other side of the stream.

This was another scenario where I could not initially see how the Japanese have much of a chance. The Americans have a ton of firepower and that 9-2 leader can just chew Japanese up. The Japanese will at best typically be facing flat defensive first fire attacks. This was an issue for me as I was to be the Japanese. However, we checked ROAR and it was 4-2 in favor of the Japanese, so clearly they had a chance. So we went for it.

It turns out that, with 6.5 turns, the Japanese have just enough time that they do not have to be foolhardy. My goal was to use the middle to try to keep as many American troops occupied as much as possible, even at the cost of units, while moving aggressively to try to pinch off one or more of the American flanks, in order to shoot some Japanese units across the stream and on to the other side. I am pretty good as the Japanese and was able to maneuver fairly successfully, frequently putting Dave in positions where he had to voluntarily break his troops or stand a good chance of losing them altogether. Others, I broke on my own (when I wasn't battle hardening or giving heroes to his troops...). However, that darn 9-2 kept rallying them, even when DM'ed, and getting them back into the action. Moreover, he was really putting the hurt to my units, just as I had predicted. Meanwhile, my striping Japanese were never getting back into anything except heaven. I was making steady progress, but taking a lot of casualties. It was not at all clear who would be able to have more CVP on the other side of the stream. It was going to be very close, and I knew that if I had to attack him in order to rectify an imbalance that I would suffer too many casualties.

Well, in the end, Dave himself unintentionally came to my aid. After many trials and tribulations with his OBA, ranging from the initial inaccuracy to not getting contact to his observer breaking, etc., he finally had his 7-0 on the other side of the stream and had the opportunity for OBA in his last player turn. He decided to try to attack a key area with it that, if successful, he might do some damage to me and would certainly make it very difficult for my last few bloodied units to get across the screen in my final player turn. However, where he wanted to place it was close enough that if it wasn't accurate, and it went to the wrong hex, he might end up getting his own guys. You can imagine what happened. He corrected and brought down the OBA, it wasn't accurate, the error roll was in the one direction that would get him, and it broke or killed his entire stack. Until that point, he likely had the scenario won, or could maneuver to make it extremely difficult for me to win it, but that did him in. It was game over and Dave deserves credit for a very hard fight. It was nice to end ASLOK playing my favorite ASL nationality--the Japanese.

With that, my ASLOK was over. I ended it 9-4, with several of what sabermetricians call "quality wins." So I was happy on that score. I had also played a lot of very enjoyable opponents, so the vast majority of my games were fun as well. I got to meet new opponents as well as play familiar faces. Needless to say, I also came away with a ton of new ASL stuff, which you will presumably eventually be reading about on my website.

One little thing. Here are the nationalities I played at ASLOK this year: American, Italian, German (twice), Soviets (twice), Japanese (twice), Free French, Dutch, Burmese, Spanish Nationalist, and Polish. Ten different nationalities in 13 scenarios! What a tremendous amount of variety ASL has to offer.

I had a great time and I want in particular to thank Bret Hildebran and Bill Hayward for their much-appreciated work in running ASLOK. I hope you guys realize how grateful I am for what you do.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

ASL Oktoberfest (ASLOK) AAR, Part I

2011-10-15T12:11:00.001-04:00

This is part one of an after action report of ASLOK (ASL Oktoberfest) 2011, although given the Benjamin Button nature of blog post displaying, who knows in what order you may read this. If I still have the energy, after this AAR is through, I may do another post with some general thoughts about ASLOK, oriented towards people who have never gone.

Tournament/Convention AARs are surprisingly popular in ASL circles. Some people, I suppose, live vicariously through others, some want to hear gossip and exploits about their friends, and then there are those, like me, who primarily want to hear about themselves. :)

ASLOK 2011 was my 11th ASLOK (conveniently for counting, I started going in 2001). For many years now, I have taken the "long" ASLOK option, showing up on the first Friday, starting to play Saturday, and playing for the next eight days, heading back the last Sunday. I have discovered that if I want to do this, I have to pace myself, otherwise, I get way too fried and frazzled near the end of the week (this is similarly why I do not typically enter the Grofaz part of the tournament, because late in the week is not when I want to do my most intense gaming).

I drove the two hours to Cleveland Friday night, checked into the Holiday Inn, and Saturday morning walked into the gaming area. This is when ASLOK is at its smallest, as only a few people show up early, with progressively more and more coming throughout the week. Because there are typically fewer than 12 people there and playing that first day, one does not always have one's choice of opponents. But the other person looking for a game at that moment was a long-time opponent of mine, Stan Jackson, who lives in the Cincinnati area. We have played each other many times (indeed, he was my second opponent at my very first ASLOK) and are pretty evenly matched. So it was nice to be able to play again. We decided on OB14 (Pursuing Kobayashi), a fighting retreat scenario from the Dispatches from the Bunker newsletter that had been reprinted by MMP in its pack of Dispatches reprints. The oddest thing about it is that it had been out so long and I have never played it--it is right up my alley (as my favorite type of scenario tends to be the small-to-medium-sized PTO action). I took the attacking (or pursuing, perhaps I should say) Americans and Stan the Japanese. I was quite rusty coming into the scenario, having only played a few scenarios all summer long, and for me, rustiness often takes the form of aggressiveness. Somewhat to my surprise, my evolution as a player over the years has taken me from a fairly conservative style of play to a fairly aggressive style of play. That's all well and good--ASL often rewards that style of play--but when I am rusty, I do not always have the right calibration of risk vs. reward. I will often try to accomplish too much, when there is still plenty of time on the play clock. There were several instances in this scenario where I probably suffered needless casualties because of this rustiness. However, the killer for me in this scenario was a quintet of 1s rolled by Stan. Things started off innocently enough when a squad of his took a morale check of some sort in my turn and got heat of battle. Being Japanese, naturally, it went berserk, the little dear. This was not a problem for me, as I could arrange in my advance phase for a nice welcoming committee. The berserk squad was going to have to run right into two American squads and a leader (and, I think, an MMG), along with an adjacent squad and MMG to add some additional pain. The net result should easily be one less Japanese squad. Except, of course, that things don't work out that way. In his prep fire phase, trying to save his berserk squad, he took a 4+1 or so shot at the big stack and rolled snake-eyes again. Naturally, the stack promptly collapsed fear as morale checks were failed left and right. Shortly thereafter, I triggered his sniper; he rolled a 1, and it went straight to that adjacent squad with the MMG.   Now the berserk squad had easy access and could mess with me some more. Anyway, ASLOK started with me in the hole, 0-1.

That evening, I matched up against Brian Wiersma. We had played once before, the previous January, when we played an Italian-Soviet scenario from the recent ASL Journal. He was a fun opponent and I enjoyed playing him. Now we would play again, and he would be looking for revenge. Oddly, we settled on another Italian Journal scenario, J127 (Messervy's Men), which features a bunch of Italian 3-4-6s defending a hill from a horde of British 2nd liners. With the best TEM being only +1, the Italians will tend to break at the slightest touch, and that is what happened to me. With their low ELR, he was quickly collecting prisoners, too. I held out to the end, but could not survive. Unfortunately, the scenario was just not very fun to play. The Italians just get shot up a lot, while it dawned on me that probably 95% of playings will end up in a battle for three specific hexes, because they are the easiest hexes for the Italian reinforcements to get to. In a sense, it almost doesn't matter what happens to the main Italian force on the hill, as long as they don't all just give up and go home, because it will always be a battle for the last level 4 hill hex and the two adjacent woods hexes. In other words, it may be balanced (ROAR tentatively suggests a slight Italian advantage), but it is a very scripted scenario, and I am not too fond of those. That wasn't Brian's fault, of course, and he played a good game. But now I was 0-2 and it was looking like a long week.

Sunday morning, I sat down for my one and only "World Cup" match (oddly, I only played one non-American in the first few days), against Dutch ASLer and collector Hennie van der Salm. Hennie is a good player; we had played 2-3 times before and I don't think I had ever beaten him. We decided to play a scenario from the just-released new Rally Point: RPT53 (Tiger Blood).   This was the one Rally Point scenario I played during the week. In this 1945 scenario, which uses 4 ASLSK half-boards, 13 American squads, mostly elite, supported by 5 Shermans (including one with a 105mm gun and a "Jumbo" with 18 frontal armor), have to clear out a low hill and a building of defending Germans. The Germans have 9 1st and 2nd line squads, an HMG, some odds and ends, an 88mm Flak gun, and a King Tiger.    I ended up with the defending Germans. I didn't think the hill was defensible, so I just set up a few units in the vicinity to be speed-bumps; mostly I set up to defend the key building in the town. I set the Tiger up very conservatively, as I was concerned about it being swarmed by Shermans. That was one concern of mine; the other was smoke. With all his Shermans, as well as 1945 bazookas and mortars, he had an awful lot of smoke at his disposal. After I saw his set-up, I was somewhat relieved. He separated his AFVs and had them entering in three different groups, none of which would be easily able to get to the others. I had no real worries about being swarmed at that point and could use my Tiger aggressively. It quickly took out his Sherman 105, then went hunting for more prey. Meanwhile, my little force on the hill actually soaked up a lot of his resources, hanging on much longer than it had a right to, and even ended up taking out another Sherman with a Panzerfaust. My 88mm Flak gun also performed heroically, immobilizing the Jumbo with a lucky shot, then forcing its crew to abandon, then in the following turn, doing some major damage to his infantry. When it was all over, all of his vehicles were dead and so were most of his other units, having died in one of those "last rushes" to get to the building. I felt I had played a good game and the rust was definitely off. Now I was 1-2.

I did not play another game that day, as I had to drive back to Columbus that evening to pick up some prescription medicine I had accidentally left behind (I tried to get it refilled locally, as I had a refill left on it, but the refill had expired, alas). So my next game took place on Monday morning. Pierce Mason--a new opponent to me--and I decided to play another Schwerpunkt scenario, from the previous year's edition, SP192 (Rock the Csaba), a Soviet-Hungarian scenario in which the attacking Soviets have to cross an irritating stream or gully (I forget which; whatever is on Board 59). The Hungarians have crappy troops (6 3-4-7s and 3 3-3-6s, but they have an HMG, a 80L AA gun and two Nimrods with good IFE. Later they get a crappy armored car to irritate the Soviets with. The Soviets get 15 1st line squads, their own HMG, and 3 open topped, no machine gun SU-76ms.   I put the scenario in my "to play" booklet last year and I notice now that in the year since its release, ROAR suggests that it may be somewhat hard on the Soviets. Luckily, I did not know this. Pierce had a good set-up for his left flank, but when he analyzed the situation, he really did not account for the possibility of the Soviets using the stream as cover to get close to the buildings, which is what I did. Once the Soviets can get past the open ground and in and among the buildings, with their solid TEM, they are going to mop up the Hungarians, and that is more or less what happened. He might have been better off having a sacrifice unit or two positioned to deny me easy use of the stream. In any case, he was a fun and gracious opponent, and now I had bootstrapped myself back up to 2-2.

My second Monday game was against John Dober. We played a scenario from the new Schwerpunkt, SP196 (Hussars and Hounds). I played an unusual number of Schwerpunkt scenarios this ASLOK, as it turned out. This scenario is somewhat similar to Tiger Blood, though it stars the British rather than the Americans. They basically have to clear the Germans (that was me) out of three of four buildings, which are fairly divergent. The Germans have a small, not so great force, of 8 squads (elite, 1st, and 2nd line), an HMG, and two JgPz IV/70s, one of which can be HIP. The Germans can also fortify a building location, though I forgot to actually do this. The British have 11 squads, a few elite but most first line, a 9-2 leader, two Challengers, a Cromwell VII, and a Carrier C. It a good force, but may be a bit small to take on such a big task in just 4 1/2 turns. For the third scenario in a row, I was a tank-killer supreme, taking out vehicles left and right. Three hex panzerfaust shot? No problem. Low odds bounding fire shot? Easy peasy. In the end game, I had basically made it virtually impossible for him to get the buildings he needed and he conceded. A number of people were playing this at the beginning of the week, because the size is just right for tournament play, but by the end of the week, it was already getting a reputation for bad balance and that reputation may be right. I note that it is currently 6-0 right now in favor of the Germans on ROAR, and presumably all of those playings came from Schwerpunkt. So John can perhaps comfort himself with the fact that he probably had an uphill battle, but I will settle for now being 3-2.

Tuesday morning, I lined up for my sixth game against Robert Scripps. We decided to play another new Schwerpunkt scenario, SP193 (Kamikaze Gorge), a late war PTO scenario in which the attacking Americans have to clear the Japanese from two of three hills (one forward, two back). He must fight the terrain as much as the Japanese, as the first hill is literally an uphill battle and he has to cross a stream with just a few options for his vehicles. Robert gave it a good try, but he had never played a Schwerpunkt scenario before and it showed--he did not realize that in the typical Schwerpunkt scenario the attacker must play very aggressively or he will simply run out of time. But Robert set about rather methodically trying to reduce my forward hill force, and I used every trick in the book to convince him that it was tougher than it actually was. As a result, he had just barely crossed the stream when the scenario was over. I never did get a chance to use the crazy SSR allowing the Japanese to strap DCs to the front of tanks and ram American vehicles with them! Anyway, now I was 4-2.

My second Tuesday game was against Jim Rischer, a local Cleveland area ASLer whom I had played a number of times in the past; he is an easy-going and genial opponent. We decided to play a rather exotic scenario from the recent LFT From the Cellar pack: FT161 (French Civil War in Gabon). There were a fair number of playings of this scenario during the week; it is fairly exotic and the size is right. It features Free French vs. Vichy French in Equatorial East Africa--so PTO terrain but no PTO (which felt right with some things, like jungle and kunai, but not so much right with bamboo). I ended up the attacking Freen French, while Jim had the defending Vichy French. I left him to set up, and when I got back, I thought I was in trouble. This scenario uses two half boards, one which is mostly for the hut overlay and the other which is the actual airstrip half of Board 38 (which is itself usually covered up with an overlay). However, the Free French set up on the bottom part of the air strip board and have to cross all that open ground before they can even get to any cover. The defending Vichy French have 9 1st line squads, an HMG, a 37mm 1/2" counter infantry gun, a 20L(4) AA gun, and 5 trenches. Later, they get a platoon of end-game reinforcements. The Free French (11.5 elite squads, a 9-1, 2 8-0s, 2 MMG, 1 LMG, and 1 60mm mtr) have to basically cross the open ground, get past or through the French defense line and into the village, where they have to control 6 or more huts--ALL THE WHILE KEEPING UNDER A 10 CVP CAP.   If you think about this, you can imagine my concern. With no smoke or anything like that (not even smoke grenades, thanks to an SSR), the Free French have to cross a ton of open ground, while their opponents can sit in trenches, then go on to capture a bunch of low TEM huts, all without losing more than 9 CVPs. Once I realized all that, I really regretted picking this scenario. However, I decided to give it the old college try. The nature of the terrain was such that, on the other side of the airfield, about half the board-length had a jungle line, then an open ground gap, then another bit of jungle and orchards. Jim set the bulk of his force in trenches along the jungle line, with a small force in the jungle/orchard bit. It was clear that his HMG was situated to defend the "gap." Analyzing the situation, I thought the only chance at all that I might have would be to set up really heavy on my left, i.e., opposite the jungle/orchard bit, and try to set up some big prep fire attacks to pin or break his HMG and another squad that could fire on the left part of the board. With my other forces, I would "conservatively rush" his "bit" defenders (which turned out to also include the HIP AA gun). If I were successful, I would have turned his flank, and might be able to scoot a force around the left flank and get back into the village before he could retreat. If I could dislocate his line in this fashion, then he would be at a disadvantage. The whole plan, though, was dependent on me getting some good prep fire and having luck crossing the open ground.

As it turned out, that is pretty much what happened. I did break the squad with the HMG and broke or pinned another key unit. My attack force largely survived crossing the open ground, and was able to break or get into close combat with most of his "bit" force. Meanwhile, my tiny right flank force, only intended to keep his trench units occupied, did a sterling job, fixing his attention right on them. He didn't realize the danger to his position--if he had, he would have immediately abandoned his trench line and begun to move back to the village (he had the advantage of interior lines). However, he failed to realize this just long enough for me to steal a march on him, and I was able to get enough units into the village that in the end, he could not successfully counterattack to take enough huts back to win. And I stayed under that damned CVP cap, too. So in the end I won, and I could be happy with the victory, too, but I do not think that most playings of this scenario will end this way. It still seems to me that the defending Vichy French have a big advantage in this scenario. But I ended my day 5-2, with five straight victories and my ASLOK half over.

Okay, continued on next rock....

ASLOK 2011 Pictures, Part IV

2011-10-11T22:13:00.002-04:00

This is getting really tiring.

Jeff DeYoung and, I think, Larry Zoet, played a big Kampfgruppe Scherer/Cholm scenario

Veteran ASLer Gary Mei (left), his first ASLOK; on right, Brian Wiersma, if I have judged his profile correctly

Part of the gaming room mid-week, getting more crowded. Geeks in their natural habitat.

Paul Siddhu on right, I think.

Andrea Pagni on left, Italian ASLer making his ASLOK debut. Also gave me a very bad dicing. Naughty boy.

ASLOK main room later in week. All the tables are full. My nest is the first one on the left, with the chair astray

Ray Vernon (?) on left and Stan Jackson on right, playing One-Log Bridge.

Al Kirkpatrick on right, a nice guy who has playtested for me

Rod Callen on right, a frequent opponent of mine, and Swedish ASLer Klas Malmstrom on the left, manfully trying to obey the command "smile for the camera," but it is not easy for Swedes.

Just some more ASL action

Playing Brian Brown in a Friendly Fire Dutch-Japanese scenario.

The famous P. J. Norton, playing Kamikaze Gorge while sitting in Raaco Gorge

Fighting Withdrawal

Row of gamers late in the week.

DASL: never was so much space devoted to so few counters

Bob Callen, cousin to Rod, on left. Mumble mumble on right.

The Pitcavage Nest, in all its glory

Last look at main gaming area, probably second Saturday morning

ASLOK 2011 Pictures, Part III

2011-10-11T21:52:00.000-04:00

Some damn scenario or another. I think it is a Crete scenario from the HOB module.

This may be a playing of Men of the Mountains, which was quite popular

JR Tracy playing, I think, Klas Malmstrom, if I can make out his face well enough

This may be a shot from the Schwerpunkt scenario Retreat from Hannut.

Probably the Action Pack scenario 800 Heroes. That warehouse has seen more action than a Bulgarian whorehouse

eventual ASLOK champ Gary Fortenberry and Hennie Van Der Salm

ASLer Robert Scripps, unknowingly preparing to go down in defeat to me in a playing of Kamikaze Gorge

R. Hall on left playing some George Kelln Scenario or another, I think

Ray Woloszyn, on left, who won the very first ASLOK, 80 years ago.

ASLOK 2011 (ASL Oktoberfest) Pictures, Part II

2011-10-11T21:39:00.003-04:00

Here is the next batch of pictures. More or less in chronological order.

Some more of the early arrivals

Some insane dice rolling contraption

later picture of the Nordic Twilight scenario

ASLOK probably Sunday morning, still sparse attendance. Just wait.

ASLOK attendees comprise two types: Nesters and Nomads. Here is an ultimate nester, complete with food stores, gameboard, printer and, in the back, actual furniture--custom built counter storage units. All this is Jack Daniel's, I believe

Close up of St. Nazaire scenario between Mike Faulkner and Brian Martuzas

A glider landing scenario.

Detail from the Red October playtest maps

I think this is the Hundred Regiments Offensive scenario from Blood and Jungle.

ASLOK organizers Bill "the Night Stalker" Hayward and Bret "Bond Villain" Hildebran

Columbus ASLer John Haas on right, oddly naked looking Pete Shelling on left

Ken Modiuski and his ASLOK drink holder; Joe Steadman looking on

ASLOK 2011 (ASL Oktoberfest) Pictures, Part I

2011-10-11T21:26:00.000-04:00


ASLOK 2011 1st Sat Morning, Mostly empty


1st Saturday, "Wild Bill" vs. "Mild Hennie"

JR Tracy vs. Steve Pleva, all the way from NY and they play each other. JR's cap hides a conjoined twin.

Some guys had the Wingen-Sur-Moden map from Nordic Twilight in play

This looks like my Italians dying in Messervy's Men (see AAR when posted). Not a very fun scenario.

"Wild Bill" Hayward on right. If I am any judge of the back of heads, it looks like French ASLer George Tournemire on the left.

The Battleschool wares of Chris and Helen Doary

So far I've been able to get buy in these pictures without mentioning that I am horrible with names and faces until I really know someone, but no longer, so basically, these are two dudes playing ASL.

Schwerpunkt's Mike Faulkner setting up a big scenario from LFT's St. Nazaire

Same Old Same Old? The Presence (or Lack) of Innovation in ASL

2010-04-25T15:06:00.007-04:00

As I write this entry, postal employees around the world are delivering copies of MMP’s latest ASL release, Action Pack 6: A Decade of War, into the greedy little hands of ASLers. The thematic notion of the pack—essentially a scenario per year (not quite achieved) for ten different years of war—is not its appeal; the “hook” that drives the product is that it comes with three maps that are a new style of geomorphic mapboard.

These “new” geomorphic mapboards mate with each other on their lengthy sides, but those lengthy sides can each also mate with two “old” geomorphic maps on the narrow edges of those maps. Similarly, two narrow edges of the “new” maps can mate with the lengthy edge of an “old” map. Theoretically, a series of such “new” maps can greatly increase the effectiveness and flexibility of the existing geomorphic map system.

Nice, right? But here’s something to chew on. These maps have debuted in 2010. That’s twenty-five years after the birth of ASL. And when one considers that the “old” geomorphic maps debuted in 1977 with the release of the original Squad Leader, it turns out that it has taken people 33 years to come up with this variation to the original geomorphic map style.

If this same level of innovation had applied to the development of the Internet, you might well be reading this essay with a CRT linked to a mainframe, and it might have originated as a multi-part Usenet posting. Over three decades for such a simple yet practical innovation? Really?

In 1977, wargamers immediately realized that Squad Leader was something different. Almost every aspect of it seemed different. It wasn’t the first tactical game—there was the popular platoon-level Panzerblitz, for example—but it was the first game that actually felt like a tactical game. It wasn’t the first game to have geomorphic maps—Panzerblitz also had those—but it was the first game with maps that actually attempted to look like reality, with real buildings and sidewalks and sewers and so forth, rather than abstract “urban hexes.” Its interactive sequence of play made it seem like actual fighting was going on.

In the wake of SL, there was a flurry of innovation, as Avalon Hill tried to throw everything but the kitchen sink into their new tactical system. New nationalities? You bet. New toys to play with? All over the place. New maps? Oh, yeah, including the first not-quite-geomorphic maps (the river maps). As the system developed, a new armor system replaced the initial one, new counters (at least for the Americans and Germans) replaced the original types of unit counters, and it seemed obvious to many that there was actually too much innovation. Or perhaps a better way to put it would be that there was innovation without integration; things just kept getting added or re-done in willy nilly fashion, with no underlying plan or coordination behind it.

Thus was born Advanced Squad Leader. ASL was itself innovative, not merely collecting and integrating previous changes or additions, but implementing entirely new systems. However, ASL was a project with a vision and a plan. It concentrated on finishing the rules—comprehensive rules (oh so comprehensive)—so that future modules would not need to add new rules to the basic systems, but could provide topic specific rules (such as desert rules, for example) and concentrate on adding new maps, overlays, and counters to the existing system. In a sense, creating ASL was like creating a tool cabinet. One might not have all the tools yet, but the cabinet still had a place for the not-yet-purchased wrench or saw, and when finally purchased, that new tool would fit in snugly among all the others.

The real question, though, is how much room is in the cabinet for unanticipated or newly-invented tools? This essay seeks to explore the extent (and possible limits) of innovation in ASL.

Innovation: Threat or Menace?

I think I’m going to “spoil” the ending to my own essay: readers will come to find that, overall, I am not all that impressed with the level of innovation in ASL so far. But before I go on to discuss its relative lack, I believe it is important to note that innovation is not a necessary thing for ASL, nor is it perhaps even always a desirable thing.

Does that seem strange to you? Yet consistency is clearly ASL’s greatest strength, and innovation for the sake of innovation does not always end up helping the end user (“New Coke,” anyone? Anyone??). Some game systems have “innovated” themselves almost to death. One only has to look at the tortuous design history of Star Fleet Battles, which debuted around the same time as the original Squad Leader, to see the nightmarish alternative history that SL/ASL might have had.

It might be argued by some that the science fictional premises of Starfleet Battles led to constant pressures for “new” features; after all, there were no historical limitations. Designers could just make stuff up. Yet other historical wargame systems have also taken “innovation” paths that might make ASLers cringe. Two examples readily at hand are ASL’s two “cousins”, the Europa system and the World in Flames system. If ASL is an attempt to provide a comprehensive examination of tactical combat during World War II, Europa is an attempt to do the same thing at the operational (regiment/divisional) level, and World in Flames is an attempt to do the same thing at the strategic level.

Europa began in the 1970s as two monster games (Drang Nach Osten and Unentschieden; actually, they were the first true monster games) that portrayed East Front warfare 1941-1944 at the divisional level. Their popularity led to sequels (Their Finest Hour, Narvik, Case White, etc.) and very quickly its publishers (originally Game Designers Workshop) realized that they could use this system to create a massive series of operational level interlocking games that could replicate the entire war in Europe. This was a great concept, ambitious and revolutionary. Yet as time went on, problems quickly amassed. The designers never created any standardized rules system, so that game rules could still vary (sometimes significantly) from one game to the next, which made mating any of them together very difficult. Eventually, games saw major systems changes (such as in the air rules), which rendered earlier games obsolete, while in other areas, such as naval rules, there were never any real rules developed at all. When Games Research/Design succeeded GDW as caretaker of Europa, things got even worse. Unhappy with the lack of geographic detail on the maps, and realizing that some of the Order of Battle work in the Europa games was quite old and obsolete, GRD began to redesign and re-release Europa games with new maps, rules, and counters—before the older system was ever completed. Now there were two entirely different groups of maps while the game-to-game rules changes never stopped. Eventually, the air system was replaced yet a third time, leading to three different air systems in Europa (as there were games with earlier systems that had never been re-released). Europa, even before its third owners, HMSGRD drove the final nails into the coffin thanks to mismanagement and cupidity, was a dying system.

World in Flames (WiF), which has always been published by Australian Design Group, took a different but equally frustrating route. Or rather, the system took two different roads at the same time. On the one hand, ADG kept re-doing WiF in different editions, fixing and adding elements to the system, creating five different editions of WiF before releasing a “Final” edition (which turned out not to be “final” after all). They have done similar multiple editions of related products Days of Decision and Fatal Alliances. On the other hand, ADG also released a steady series of additions to the system that would add new units, new rules, or both, including Ships in Flames, Planes in Flames, America in Flames, and so on. Players new to the system had no idea what they needed to buy in order to have a “complete” system. Even now, ADG is releasing several new versions of or additions to the WiF system, including one which will essentially be the same game but at the divisional level. WiF has no idea when or how to stop, and the result is an increasingly nightmarish system.

ASL, in contrast, once it emerged as a butterfly from the problematic SL cocoon, has managed to avoid all of those problems. It has had a consistent framework (even the 2^nd Edition ASL Rulebook, released in 2001, essentially just included errata and rules fixes) and a very stable platform that has allowed both official and unofficial publishers of ASL material to freely add to the oeuvre.

So there is every reason to thank the various caretakers of ASL for being good stewards and for not presenting us with one of these awful alternatives. At the same time, though, one cannot help but ask whether designers of ASL products (official and unofficial alike) are perhaps missing opportunities to add to the system, to take it places that it has not gone before, or even to reinvent it. Is there room for innovation in ASL, or would any significant innovation actually threaten its foundation and possibly lead down a path like Starfleet Battles, Europa, or World in Flames?

Innovation in “Official” ASL Products

Perhaps the best way to answer that question is by looking at what innovation actually has occurred in ASL since its creation in the mid-1980s. Someone just getting into the game right now might not realize it, but when ASL debuted, its designers were quite optimistic about its prospects for expansion and innovation. It is instructive to look at the Table of Contents for the First Edition of the ASL Rulebook. The original ASLRB consisted primarily of Chapters A-D. The Contents, though, anticipated the future. For example, Chapter E (Miscellaneous), F (North Africa) and G (Pacific Theater) were all given chapters, as it was known those would be covered in future expansions.

However, beyond those planned concluding rulebook chapters there were other things in the air. One of these was Chapter I, designated “Campaign Game,” promised as “available later.” Another was Chapter H, “Design Your Own.” A third was Chapter J, “Deluxe ASL” (about which more in a minute). And then there was Chapter L, “Postal ASL” (this was in the days before disgruntled postal workers might have been featured in counters of their own). The publishers of ASL thought there were all sorts of directions the system might actually eventually go.

However, in the end, it didn’t take most of those directions. The “Campaign Game,” which may have conceived of as a more complex and detailed version of the “personal leader” campaign game that appeared in the original Squad Leader, never emerged. Chapter H contained some of the basic information needed for “Design Your Own” scenarios, but no materials were ever added to allow generation of such scenarios, leaving it uncompleted. “Postal ASL,” the official system for ASL-by-mail never emerged (not even when e-mail made it more feasible in the 1990s).

The only one of these ideas that ever really saw print was Deluxe ASL, which was actually designed at the same time as ASL itself was, and released (in the form of the first DASL module, Street of Fire) concurrently, along with a line of ASL miniatures from Micro-Armor. DASL featured the first innovation to the standard SL geo-board, with a new style of geo-board featuring ultra-large hexes and designed to be played with 1/285^th scale vehicles as a quasi-miniatures system. Given the roots of the original SL, which was inspired by the miniatures genre in several respects, it is easy to see how Avalon Hill thought that ASL might be able to exist in a miniatures-friendly version.

However, the concept—though definitely innovative—was not actually that popular. Though Streets of Fire sold well enough, its sequel, Hedgerow Hell, sold comparatively poorly, and Avalon Hill decided its map artist would be better off spending time on regular ASL mapboards. Except for the occasional new scenario designed for existing boards, Avalon Hill essentially stopped supporting DASL.

The end reality became something different from the initial promise. Though it seemed at the beginning as if a hundred schools of thought might contend, ASL quickly became an extremely conservative system, concentrating on finishing the core modules and adding conventional scenarios to the existing system. Over the next 15 years, there would only be two true innovations to the ASL system, and in the end, only one would be really exploited.

The first true innovation for ASL came about five years after its initial release, when Charles Kibler designed the first Historical ASL (HASL) module, Red Barricades. ASLers need no explanation for this product, still popular two decades later. Red Barricades was particularly innovative for a number of reasons. First, it was the first ASL product to break the bonds of geomorphic mapboards (after all, even DASL used a form of geo-board). It was also the first ASL product to truly escape the shackles of scenarios, offering in its campaign games a much greater length and depth of play. It was also the first ASL product to focus on a particular historical battle.

Red Barricades proved highly popular and its success resulted in a number of other HASLs, published both by Avalon Hill and its successor MMP, including Kampfgruppe Peiper (I & II), Pegasus Bridge, Blood Reef: Tarawa, A Bridge Too Far, Operation Watchtower, Operation Veritable, Valor of the Guards, and more. It is strange, though, that all of these modules essentially used the same game system as the original Red Barricades. The situations changed, but the rules basically remained the same (some of the later modules also included geoboard scenarios, but that is no innovation).

Oddly enough, in the twenty years that HASLs have been around, no one has attempted to create a different form of campaign game. They have all basically emulated Red Barricades. Thus the incredibly innovative Red Barricades was followed by decades of little innovation at all. Even obvious possibilities, like players making strategic decisions that would generate scenarios on certain portions of the historical map, have remained unexplored.

The second true innovation for ASL came in the late 1990s with the development of Solitaire Advanced Squad Leader (SASL). It was published in a small print run as one of Avalon Hill’s last products before giving up the ghost, then was republished by MMP in a revamped and expanded 2^nd Edition. SASL was quite innovative; not only did it create a surprisingly solid set of solitaire rules for ASL, but added new fog of war and command and control concepts that the original system did not have. It even had a company campaign system to allow the linking together of multiple missions. Its designer? None other than Charles Kibler, who had designed the first HASL, the only other true ASL innovation.

Unfortunately, though truly innovative, SASL was not well supported by MMP (AH did not last long enough to not support it), which never released any follow on SASL products (though it did include nationality data in subsequent products like Armies of Oblivion). In the mid-2000s, MMP announced it would not even reprint SASL. To a certain degree this is understandable, as ASL is so well suited for face to face play (and unlike most other wargames, has an audience big enough to allow easy face to face play for most people), and as a result, SASL did not prove as popular as it might have were it released for some other game system.

Nevertheless, it is a shame that no further attempts were made to broaden its popularity—especially because a dedicated few have not only continued to play SASL but also continued to innovate on the system. The most interesting innovation regarding SASL is the so-called “Group SASL” (GSASL). It seems a bit oxymoronic to have a “group” “solitaire” game, but that is the novelty. GSASL allows multiple people (2 to infinity) to come together in a sort of campaign game in which they generate the overall course of action by playing and recording SASL scenarios. It’s a distant cousin of some of the large play-by-mail wargames that used to be fairly common in the 1980s. More than 10 years after the introduction of SASL, people continue to play GSASL campaigns on a variety of subjects, yet there are not even any officially sanctioned rules for GSASL.

The MMP years have seen even less innovation than the Avalon Hill era. Although MMP has added new core modules, new HASLs, and new Action Packs and publications to the system, they have all used systems, rules, or component styles that originated long ago. MMP have been very conservative stewards of ASL, even down to its components. Though forced by missing original artwork to create new artwork for reprints of existing geo-boards, and forced by rising costs to turn from mounted maps to an unmounted style of geo-board, their changes to rules layout, counters, and charts have been limited to extremely minor font changes and other similar minor changes. MMP has resisted even changing to the “whitecore” counters that all of its other games use, even though it would save them money and convenience to do so (because they are concerned that some ASL veterans would object to counters whose sides are white rather than grey). Indeed, the one true component innovation that MMP has ever tried—and only once at that—was to use new map artwork in a mini-HASL that appeared in an Operations magazine special issue.

Until AP6, that is, in which the new geo-boards were introduced. It is perhaps worth mentioning that AP6 was designed by a troika of outside designers, Gary Fortenberry, Bob MacNamara and Charles Kibler (yes, that Charles Kibler), who were all figures originally associated with ASL at Avalon Hill. And the modified geo-boards in AP6 are, it should be admitted, a very minor innovation (it should probably also be noted that they did not invent the non-standard geo-board; Critical Hit and Heat of Battle both released non-standard geos of different sorts years ago).

The history of innovation among official publishers of ASL is thus very limited—and one wonders if there would have been any at all had it not been for Charles Kibler.

Innovation in Unofficial ASL Products

If official ASLdom has not seen much innovation, how about the vast conglomeration of unofficial ASL? Over the past decades, dozens of individuals, groups, and companies have produced a tremendous variety of ASL-related products. Surely among all of these products, we can find a large number of innovations created by people with no real need to hew to the limitations of the original system?

Actually, it turns out that third party publishers (TPP) are hardly any more innovative at all than official publishers. One of the reasons for this, perhaps, is that the sine qua non for TPP is to produce a product which is very similar in nature and quality to official products. In other words, there is in some ways more pressure for TPP to emulate official ASLdom than to transcend it.

The most innovative unofficial development for ASL was actually not any sort of change or addition to the system at all, but rather the development of a way to play ASL on-line. VASL, designed originally by Rodney McKinney and honed and enhanced by a variety of VASL elves, certainly was a revolution in the way many people played ASL, and really brought the ASL world closer together, but it did not change the actual system one bit.

One legitimate area where TPP have expanded the boundaries of ASL is in the area of conflicts other than World War II. Official ASL has not gone beyond the bounds of WWII except in a few isolated scenarios. TPP, however (especially Critical Hit), have released full modules or products on subjects such as the Italo-Ethiopian War, the Spanish Civil War, the Israeli War of Independence, the French war in Indochina, the Korean War and others. Although an official Korean War module has ostensibly been in the works for a great many years, progress on it has been excruciatingly slow. On the fringes, a few people have tried to take the ASL system backwards to WWI or forwards still more to the Vietnam War and later, but without much success, as the ASL system doesn’t necessarily translate well to those conflicts from other eras.

Otherwise, innovation has been hard to come by. Though a great many HASLs have been produced by TPP, they basically all use systems derivative of Red Barricades and its official successors, save for a couple of products which use “fake” campaign games that consist of playing several scenarios in succession.

Some innovative concepts have come up, but not been carried through to execution. For example, for some years, Heat of Battle floated around the concept of a “Company Commander” game that would simulate mobile battles over a large distance by using a card-based system to generate specific scenarios during the campaign. This would have been a very innovative system, had it been developed. Though HOB went as far as generating a rough draft prototype for playtesting, the inherent difficulties of getting such a complex system to work apparently proved too much and the idea was abandoned.

One TPP has actually produced an inarguably innovative use of the ASL system—a product clearly more imaginative than any other that the TPP has released, though it is clearly a niche product if there ever was one. The Detroit-based East Side Gamers troika created and released a set of “Zombie rules” for ASL that allowed the ASL system to simulate fighting zombies during a postulated future zombie apocalypse. These were not just joke rules, but a thoughtful use of ASL concepts to represent this unique sort of supernatural combat. Obviously, though, their popularity has been limited.

Wither Innovation?

This survey may depress some. Will we always be seeing the “same old same old” in ASL (not that it isn’t tons of fun, of course)? Is it even possible to be innovative with ASL and still have it be ASL?

As rich as ASL is, I have to have confidence that more can be done with it, and that there is still room for imaginative and innovative designers to leave their mark and to discover new ways that people can enjoy it. Just as Charlie Kibler gave us Red Barricades, I think that some future designer, suitably inspired, could give us some other ASL gift. I think that the areas of greatest opportunity remain in group methods of playing ASL, and new campaign systems and ways of using ASL to fight larger battles, but there are almost certainly other areas of opportunity out there as well.

Perhaps this essay might even start some brain cell action out there somewhere that will years from now result in a new way to delight and amaze ASLers.

Making Sausages

2010-01-31T11:12:00.011-05:00

Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck once said, "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made." I think a good case could be made that the same is true for ASL scenario playtesting and development. Most of the time, most ASL players don't give much thought to how the scenario in front of them was created, nor is there any reason for them to. The exception is when they encounter a "dog" (i.e., unbalanced) scenario, or a scenario that clearly has some sort of rules or interpretation problem. Then one hears the irritated lament, "Was this thing even playtested?"

The answer may be no. Or the answer may be that it was not playtested enough, or not enough in the right way, or by the right players, or simply that the correct lessons were not learned from the playtesting that occurred. Sometimes a scenario turns out problematical or unbalanced because the publishers were lazy, sloppy, or incompetent. But often it turns out that way through no fault of their own. The bottom line, though, is that while extensive playtesting cannot guarantee that a scenario will be balanced or fun, the lack of such playtesting certainly raises the risk of such an outcome.

What I'd like to do in this essay is discuss playtesting and development in ASL, some of the difficulties involved, and perhaps more importantly, its past and present state. By way of introduction, I should say that I have had the opportunity to do scenario packs with three different publishers (MMP, Heat of Battle, and Schwerpunkt), to have playtested for a number of official and unofficial products, to have witnessed many other playtests, and to be close to a number of scenario designers and publishers and heard many an "inside" story (and gossip). Through all of this, I have seen a lot of sausage made, and it isn't pretty. I will try to give this "insider's" perspective without violating confidences.

For those new to this issue, I should say a word about first, why playtesting is important, and second, how playtesting is done. Playtesting is the term used to refer to testing of a wargame or wargame scenario through pre-publication playing to eliminate rules problems, ahistorical or unrealistic outcomes, and to make sure that the end product is balanced; that is, that both sides have a reasonable chance to win. I should note that many wargame publishers do not care about this last point; they have no problems producing games with unbalanced scenarios or campaigns, because they belong to a camp that believes in "historical" victory conditions (i.e., achieving the historical goals of one side) rather than "competitive" victory conditions (i.e., creating victory conditions such that both sides have a roughly equal chance at game victory, even if due to a preponderance of advantages one side will always overpower the other). In ASL specifically, however, balance is considered one of the greatest attributes of a scenario and is highly valued. One reason for this is that many wargames are primarily played solitaire, while ASL is primarily played competitively, whether face to face or on-line.

Development is the term used to refer the process by which wargame and scenario designs are honed and improved. Usually this means intepreting and applying the results of playtests in order to work out the kinks of a scenario. In some wargaming companies the designer is also the chief developer, while in other companies, the developer is a separate person. In the ASL world, the roles of designer and developer are usually combined, though not always (Avalon Hill and then later MMP, for example, typically relied/rely on outside designers and internal developers).

There are five main types of playtesting, all with uses and weaknesses. These are:

Solitaire playtesting. A designer playtests his own work, playing both sides. This is typically useful to suss out set-up issues and errors, rules problems, and gross imbalances, often before sending it out for playtesting with others. Beyond that, its value is limited because a designer tends to be so familiar with the scenario that he is often blind to its problems. For example, because he wrote a rule, he knows how it should be interpreted, but may not realize how other people may be likely to intepret it in actuality. Unfortunately, in the history of ASL, there have been some products, typically by smaller TPP or appearing in general wargaming magazines, in which solitaire playtesting seems to have been the primary type of playtesting involved.
Designer-involved playtesting. This type of playtesting involves the designer playing his scenario with someone else. This is a very important early stage type of playtesting. With the designer involved, he can quickly see problems emerging when his scenario is put to the test of play with an actual opponent (and may even be able to create solutions "on the fly." The other person involved may try strategies the designer did not anticipate, or find other ways to push or even "break" the scenario. In these respects, this type of playtesting is very useful. However, its usefulness tends to decrease over time. The designer will quickly become familiar, even too familiar, with the intricacies of the scenario, whereas most of the time each opponent will be new to the scenario. What does it tell you, in terms of balance, if someone very familiar with a scenario beats someone playing it for the first time? It's hard to know how to interpret that. Sometimes a designer can play the same scenario with the same person several times, which is definitely better, and produces results similar to internal playtesting (see below).
Internal playtesting. Internal playtesting is when a relatively small group of people playtest the scenarios against each other. Many third party ASL publishers are oriented primarily around this method. Schwerpunkt and the East Side Gamers are two examples. This method offers many advantages, and relatively few drawbacks. The main advantage is that experienced player of known strengths can repeatedly play the same scenarios, as both sides--this is very likely to discover even small problems, if adequatel done. The chief drawback that does sometime emerge happens because small groups of people who repeatedly play each other often tend to develop similar playing styles over time (plus, their menstrual cycles synchronize). But sometime a scenario that tends to play out one way using a particular play style may actually play differently with some other play style. This is why it is often useful to supplement internal playtesting with at least some blind playtesting.
Supervised blind playtesting. This sort of playtesting is very valuable, though opportunities for it do not come up that often. With this sort of playtesting, two players not part of an internal group playtest a scenario, and the playing is witnessed by a designer, developer or other person already experienced with the scenario. With this, one gets all the benefits of true blind playtesting (see below), but avoids some of the weaknesses.
True blind playtesting. In contrast to supervised blind playtesting, true blind playtesting involves two people playtesting a scenario away from the vigilant eyes of the designer/developer, then reporting the results to him. This is very useful because it provides completely fresh eyes on a scenario. However, it definitely adds issues of interpretation, because the designer/developer is completely reliant on the playtesters adequately being able to communicate the import of their play. If playtesters interpreted a rule incorrectly, or were of greatly unequal skill, the designer may never know. This is why blind playtesting is an important corrective, but cannot typically be the primary method. The old Avalon Hill, though, often had enough resources (in terms of people willing to volunteer for them) that some of their games had different volunteer playtest coordinators, who were outside people who took on the role of surrogate developers, gathering and supervising blind playtests. Because the coordinators ended up being very familiar with the games themselves, they could help designers/developers interpret the playtests conducted under their supervision.

One thing that all this should suggest is that not all playtests (or playtesters) are equal. If one playtester is a very experienced ASLer and his opponent a novice, the results of that playtest may not be very valuable to the designer (unless the novice wins!). If two novices play each other, how valuable will their results be? It is hard to know. There are a number of ASL scenarios that give one set of results when played by experienced players (who can better undersand the nuances of the scenario) but another set of results when played by inexperienced players (typically because the scenario requires a knowledge of either offensive or defensive tactics that the novice will not have). And often it is the relatively inexperienced players, all fired up with a new passion, who may be most likely to volunteer to playtest.

So the magic question becomes how many playtests are the right number of playtests for a scenario. Alas, there is no magical answer. Some types of scenarios inherently require more playtests than others. For example, "timing" scenarios, in which different forces enter the mapboard (or must move across the mapboard) at different times from different places, are often notoriously difficult to playtest, because if the timing is not just right, one side or the other will easily be able to accomplish its goals. Moreover, some scenarios just start off being better designed (in terms of balance) than others. These scenarios happily require fewer playtests. To give a personal example, my favorite scenario from Action Pack #3: Few Returned (a pack I designed and developed both) is AP23, Agony at Arnautovo. The scenario involves an attack and counterattack (so both sides get to attack and defend during the scenario), which is not the easiest sort of scenario to design, so I anticipated a gruelling playtest process. However, to my delight, I discovered that the scenario seemed to work well right from the very first playtest. After that first playing, I made some slight adjustments, and from that point on, it seemed very fun and balanced, with no more changes required. As every playing worked out well, it did not take very many playings before I could confidently declare it "finished." Happily, its post-publication history bore out the playtest results, and the scenario has a good reputation. In contrast, scenario AP22 (Ghost Riders) ended up taking a huge number of playtests to get the balance right, and ended up being a lot more work (though all that work did produce a good scenario).

As a rule of thumb, the less certain one is about one's playtesters (for example, if the bulk of playtesting is designer-involved playtesting or truly blind playtesting), the more playtests are required. There is no magic number of playtests after which a scenario can be deemed awesome. Generally speaking, the more one playtests, the greater a chance that the scenario will be a good one. However, there are no guarantees, and after a while, the law of diminishing returns begins to kick in. Unfortunately, the law doesn't inform you when it has kicked in.

Several years ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing John Hill, the wargame designer who created the original Squad Leader. He told me that in designing the scenarios for Squad Leader, he took extra care to playtest the first scenario, Guards Counterattack, a very high number of times, because it would be the first scenario players would experience and he wanted it to be just right. His great efforts did not go unrewarded; the scenario ended up being both fun and well-balanced.

When ASL first came out, Avalon Hill followed that tradition. The scenarios that appeared in Beyond Valor were extensively playtested. The proof is in the pudding. The ROAR site, which allows players to record the results of scenario playings, shows that almost all of the original 10 Beyond Valor scenarios are well balanced, and some of them are almost exquisitely balanced. Subsequent early Avalon Hill ASL products did not match this great height, but nonetheless tended to have a high proportion of well balanced scenarios.
The same is true for some third party ASL products. One of the most praised third party products in ASL history is the Windy City Wargamers 1996 tournament scenario pack. The Windy City Wargamers are a Chicago-based gaming group that developed an extensive ASL following (most famous for an annual tournament, the ASL Open, that is still being run today). The genesis for the pack began in late 1994 with just two scenarios, which grew in number over time (until it became a full pack). Original playtesting of the scenarios was done primarily by two people, who playtested them extensively, a couple as many as 12 times. In August 1995, Louie Tokarz, whose baby the project was, began sending them to other club members for more playtesting. Thus the pack had the advantage of being playtested by a fairly large number of very experienced players. This continued for six more months, until January 1996. By this time all the scenarios had received extensive playtesting. The pack was finally finished in February 1996. The resulting scenarios were extremely well received. Looking at it today, 13 years later, only one of the ten scenarios seems unbalanced, while the rest range from balanced to extremely balanced. Moreover, they are fun. Fully four of the scenarios in the pack are considered classics today: Eye of the Tiger, Stand and Die, Abandon Ship and Will to Fight...Eradicated.

Most ASL products do not get that amount of tender loving care, however. It is sad to say, but some publishers have published ASL scenarios that have not been playtested at all. One prominent third party publisher developed something of a reputation in the late 1990s for occasionally doing this. I cannot independently confirm those allegations. However, over the past five years, two different scenario designers confided in me that they submitted unplaytested scenario designs to third party publishers who published the scenarios as submitted (i.e., without playtesting). One of these cases involved a third party publisher that has had a fairly high reputation. After the scenario was published, players quickly realized that it had a problem which rendered it more or less unplayable, and a revised version had to be released. Obviously, even a modicum of playtesting would have revealed that problem. Some early third party scenarios, like some of the ones published in On All Fronts, an early ASL newsletter, clearly had no playtesting before publication.

In most cases, though, playtesting is not missing, but merely insuficient. Sometimes this is because of overstretching or a lack of commitment, or perhaps even "burnout" on a project before it is truly finished. In some cases, it may be an overconfident person publishing his own scenarios. Many designers find the design process far more enjoyable than the more thankless playtesting and development process; it is perhaps not surprising that some might neglect the latter somewhat. I was recently informed, regarding one third party publisher who has been publishing a fair amount of scenarios with balance issues, that the problem was that their internal playtesters were not experienced and they were reluctant to accept the comments of their few outside playtesters. Is this true? I have not yet been able to confirm it.

Rather than engage in innuendo, or being forced to keep sources anonymous, I will relate a personal experience of a less than optimal playtest/development process. My first scenario design project as a scenario pack centered on the U.S. 37th Infantry Division in the PTO (on New Georgia and Bougainville). I was still a relatively new player, having only played ASL for a few years at that point, though extensively. I designed 10 scenarios and began to get them playtested, thinking at some point I would submit them somewhere.

As it turned out, I ended up doing the bulk of the development work on the project. I was able to get a pretty decent number of playtests for the scenarios, but the bulk of them were either designer-involved playtests or truly blind playtests. Note from my above descriptions that both of these methods have problems. In too many of the playtests, I was personally involved, and I naturally became over-familiar with many of the scenarios, and would win no matter which side I played, which made it difficult to understand balance issues involved. Some playtesters were novices, while other playtesters sent inadequate reports. Far too often, a playtester or set of playtesters only played a scenario once, not becoming truly familiar with it.

Making sense of all this was difficult for me, an inexperienced designer. Although I did not realize it at the time, I tended to fall into some development traps. One common trap that developers can fall into is the tendency to explain away results. For example,a player sends to a designer a playtest result from a playing between him and a friend. In this playtest, the Japanese player won. While one might think the designer would at least wonder if perhaps the scenario is unbalanced in favor of the Japanese, especially if previous playtests showed similar results, sometimes a designer (who, it will be recalled, is often overfamiliar with his scenarios) will read the report and rationalize: "Well, the American player didn't do X and Y; no wonder the Japanese player won." It is actually quite easy to unconsciously slip into this mindset.

During all of this, I had reached an agreement with third party publisher Heat of Battle to publish the scenarios as a scenario pack; this eventually became Buckeyes! While making these arrangements, I had the self-awareness to realize that I was an inexperienced designer, developer and playtester, and that though all the scenarios had been playtested to some degree, these playtests were likely to be insufficient. I told Heat of Battle that the scenarios all needed to go through a thorough batch of playtesting by Heat of Battle. They began this process, playtesting several of the scenarios several times, but never completed it. I still don't know why; I presume a combination of a lack of resources and lack of desire. Instead, the decision was made to go ahead and publish it. I went along with this; inexperienced as I was, I didn't know any better.

The resulting product did not end up being a Beyond Valor or WCW pack, that's for sure. While actual errata was very minor, some of the scenarios ended up less balanced than they would have been with more, and more rigorous, playtesting. The first scenario in the pack, Welcome to the Jungle, designed as a good introductory PTO scenario, ended up strongly unbalanced in favor of the Japanese (I should note Heat of Battle later let me add a bit of balancing errata to help correct this). After this was brought to my attention--in the not very shy way that ASL players have a way of doing--I arranged some post publication designer-observed blind playtesting that confirmed the scenario was not balanced. I subsequently went back through all the playtest reports and e-mails related to this scenario, to see if I could trace what went wrong, and I discovered that I had clearly fallen victim to designer rationalization. If I had spent less time trying to explain away the playtest results and more time paying attention to them, I might have been better off. Of course, this was my first effort as a designer and that was my first scenario.

As is the case with many third party products, not enough playings have been recorded in ROAR for me to know how many of the Buckeyes! scenarios might be unbalanced. One of them, Repple-Depples No More, certainly seems like it might be a candidate. Others I am more confident about, or have gotten good word of mouth reports on. Is Buckeyes! a bad pack? No, it's not. It has some good scenarios in it. But it is only an average pack. There is every possibility that it could have been better if I had been a more experienced designer/developer and if Heat of Battle had given it the full playtesting that I had hoped they would. I think we jointly share the blame that Buckeyes! in all likelihood did not reach its potential.

So, you need a lot of playtesting and, moreover, you need a lot of that playtesting to be effective playtesting? And you need to be able to interpret those results correctly? That's a lot of work. You bet.

I should note that there are others who have differing opinions on this issue. Glenn Houseman, an experienced scenario designer who is one of the main people behind the East Side Gamers scenario packs, thinks that many designers and publishers overstate the amount of playtesting their scenarios get (which may be true in some cases) and that scenarios typically don't need a ton of playtesting.

In May 2006, Glenn (a friend of mine), made the following post (somewhat edited by me for length) on an ASL forum, explaining his views (he has reiterated this opinion at times, so I believe it is one he still holds):

"A good scenario designer creates a balanced scenario, which then only needs to
be playtested a few times to polish the details. There seems to be a whole
ignorant cult that's developed in the last couple of years that the more
a scenario is playtested, the better and more "balanced" it will be. It's a
load of crap. A lousy design doesn't magically get better by playtesting it over
and over. It just wastes playtester's time. I'm very disappointed that many of
the designers I've met feel the need to inflate the number of playests their
scenario had before it was published. They seem ashamed to admit to anything
under a dozen. They may be impressing people who don't know anything about
scenario design, but they make me laugh. If your design needs to be playtested
two dozen times, you suck. A scenario's balance and playability are decided
at creation, NOT as the result of playtesting it over and over. The DESIGNER is
responsable for how balanced and fun it is, not the ammount of playtesting. If a
designer creates an inherently unbalanced, boring scenario, two dozen playtests
will not change this...it will only make it more bland. My most popular and
balanced design (22-17 on ROAR) was only officially playtested three times. Most
take four or five. Others have taken nine or ten. If it goes beyond that...I
dump it...I simply can't believe that I'm some sort of genius who can do in five
playtests what other designers require in twenty...Please explain to me how this
myth of a zillion playtests equals a good, balanced scenario came to be accepted
as gospel; and why perfectly good, talented designers now feel the need to lie
about how many times they playtest."

This is clearly an area where Glenn and I disagree, at least for the most part. I think it is mostly true that extensive playtests cannot necessarily save a badly conceived or designed scenario. I will note that sometimes they can (playtesters can often come up with great suggestions), and also that sometimes designers don't realize their design is poor (and perhaps should be abandoned or reconceived), and it is only the playtesters who can make them aware of this. Subtract those playtests and the designer may march forward in ignorance.

But I think more importantly, extensive (quality) playtesting makes it more likely that a scenario will be good, or that an inherently good scenario can become excellent. Extensive playtesting, though never a guarantee of success, offers at least the possibility that minor problems can be discovered and excised, that game concepts can be thoroughly tested, and that balance can be honed. Though Glenn, a talented designer, has designed and published a number of scenarios I have thoroughly enjoyed, I have to suspect that even more of his scenarios would have been even better had he arranged for more extensive (and more blind) playtesting. We will have to be satisfied with what we have.

I do think he is right that some people give the impression that their products are more playtested than they actually are. For people concerned about this issue, some potential warning signs to look for include: 1) few or no playtesters mentioned or credited in the product; 2) short period between first announcement that a product is in development and its appearance on the market (keep in mind that it typically takes at least a year to produce a pack of 10 well playtested scenarios, and adjust upwards accordingly for larger products); 3) publishers releasing a number of products in a short period of time; and 4) large amounts of errata or post-publication fixes, other than those related to production problems.

Unfortunately--and in case people were wondering if I would continue this essay forever, I will let people know that we are at the final section--I am somewhat pessimistic about the state of playtesting today and its future. The main reason for this is that the pool of quality playtesters is getting mighty overworked these days. The good news is that we are experiencing a wealth of third party products (partially due to a bit of product constipation at MMP). Just think of the active third party publishers out there: Critical Hit, Heat of Battle, Bounding Fire Productions, Le Franc Tireur, Schwerpunkt, East Side Gamers, Friendly Fire, and several smaller ones.

Some of these publishers have their own internal groups, people who rarely do any ASL other than playtesting their on products. Others reach out to the ASL world, soliciting help in playtesting. I know a number of ASLers actively playtesting for at least three publishers. Yet only a certain percentage of ASLers are interested at all in playtesting, of these not all are actually good playtesters, and of the good playtesters, many have limited time.

I can't escape the feeling that there is more demand for good playtesting right now than there are good playtesters with sufficient time and energy. Even some publishers with internal playtest groups, like Schwerpunkt, are cuttng back on the amount of playtesting they do for their products. Some have justified this by nothing that they are far more experienced playtesters and developers today than a decade ago. Therefore, it is easier for them to note potential problems or issues today, whereas earlier it would have required more playtests to find the same problems. I think this explanation has a certain amount of validity to it, but as Stalin might have said, sometimes quantity has a quality all its own.

Though it would be difficult for me to objectively prove it, I think we are suffering the consequences today for the comparatively poor playtester to product ratio. Equivalents to the WCW pack seem to be relatively rare these days. Some might suggest that some of the Friendly Fire packs are comparable, and this may be true--they are of high quality overall--but it will take more time to be sure. I am not privy to the amount or nature of playtesting that goes into the Friendly Fire packs, so I can't comment on them in that regard.

It may well be that some of us will have to adjust our expectations for scenario packs, if we have not already. For a pack of 10 scenarios, perhaps a reasonable expectation would be that three of its scenarios turn out to be very well balanced, three more turn out to be reasonably balanced, and the rest range from somewhat unbalanced to very unbalanced. That is how a number of ASL products are turning out these days. Is this satisfactory to you? Unsatisfactory? I honestly am not sure myself.

Sometimes the back room of the butcher shop isn't that pretty! But I still want my bacon...

2009: The Year in ASL

2010-01-01T15:18:00.007-05:00

Today is January 1. The Old Year has exited the map and the New Year is on the board edge, waiting for the MPh so it can enter. A propitious time, then, to take a look back at the year 2009 as it pertains to the Advanced Squad Leader world and even to offer a few awards and plaudits.

Some things are universal. We all had worse dice luck than we deserved, while all of our wins were achieved through skill alone. None of us got to play as much as we wanted to, and we all waited for ASL products that never appeared.

How many ASL products did appear in 2009? Yesterday, the year’s last ASL items arrived at my doorstep, Le Franc Tireur #12 and Command & Strategy #7 (a general wargaming magazine with a minor amount of ASL content; see upcoming write-up in the World of ASL compendium). This means that , aside from reprints and re-issues, there were around 16 issues of general wargaming magazines that had at least one ASL or ASLSK scenario in them, about 9 issues of ASL related newsletters (including two issues of Dispatches from the Bunker, which includes scenarios), about 15 third party ASL modules and scenario packs, two official ASL products, and one official ASLSK product. In addition, there were a multitude of problematical “Wild Bill Wilder” items (see below).

All in all a nice catch. Looking at them collectively, though, we can see that three themes or issues seemed to be particularly noteworthy in 2009. One is positive or neutral, depending on one’s point of view, while the other two themes are more troubling.

The Year of the Specialty Product. ASL’s greatest strength is its ability to represent virtually any theater or action in the World War II era. Despite this, many designers have no particular desire to flex their muscles and are content in creating scenarios on familiar subjects and themes. But some designers do look a little farther afield, developing pet interests and projects on less familiar subjects. One of the very first third party ASL products, for example, was Soldiers of the Negus, which looked at the Italo-Ethiopian War of 1935-36. The year 2009, though, seems to have blown away all previous years in the number and variety of ASL publications on obscure subjects and themes. While products on familiar themes, such as Normandy (three products!) and the Eastern Front, did appear, they were greatly outnumbered by products featuring much more esoteric themes.

The tone was set in March, when Xavier Vitry and his Le Franc Tireur released their St. Nazaire: Operation Chariot module, designed by Andy Hershey. This beautiful module allows players to recreate the British commando raid on St. Nazaire, France, in 1942. Two months later, Le Franc Tireur followed up this effort with their From the Cellar Pack 4, a themed scenario pack that features rules and scenarios for the Russian Civil War of the 1920s. This pack combined high production values with considerable originality.

Not to be outdone, Heat of Battle’s lone 2009 ASL release was a scenario pack by Jay Long on the Long March during the first phase of the Chinese Civil War. From this epic 1930s confrontation between the Chinese Communists and the Guomindang emerged the PLA that would eventually overthrow the Guomindang regime and establish Communist rule in China. But Jay and Heat of Battle were matched by a group of Swedish ASL players who banded together to create a very attractive product on one of the most obscure subjects of all: Swedish volunteers in World War II (Sweden, after all, was a neutral country).

Other ASL products also explored unusual or obscure areas. Rally Point 4, published by Schwerpunkt, was a themed scenario pack in which all the scenarios were set in the last week of the war in Europe. And Kansas City ASLers debuted at their annual tournament a small scenario pack that featured nothing but partisan warfare.

For ASLers who get out of their comfort zone when playing something not labeled with Normandy, Arnhem, the Bulge, Stalingrad or Kursk, this 2009 trend might not have been a pleasant one. And few people are interested in all topics, so even someone interested in St. Nazaire might have no interest at all in the Long March. A smaller potential audience is the price one pays for being esoteric. All in all, though, it was gratifying to see designers stretch the ASL system to its limits in 2009, and we probably ought to be grateful to them for giving us something new.

The Wilder Kingdom. A far less happy theme of 2009 was the Wild Bill Wilder phenomenon. Bill Wilder, someone who had dabbled in various tactical board and computer wargames over the years, began in late 2008 to churn out what would probably best be described as ASL pseudo-products. These were amateur ASL mini-modules on a variety of themes, most of them “modern” (i.e., the 1950s up to the 2000s). These mini-modules would contain a small number of unplaytested scenarios, some undeveloped rules, and varying numbers of hand-cut cardboard counters. Bill Wilder would make these a few at a time, then sell them on E-bay, where a coterie of obsessive-compulsive ASL completists would bid absolutely outrageous amounts of money (one recent item went for $378) for the unplayable products.

Once Bill Wilder started getting incredible amounts of money for his initial efforts, he seemed to go into high gear in 2009, releasing more than 15 of these awful pseudo-products through the course of the year. And yet, despite the well-deserved reputation he garnered for making complete crap, there were still people willing to pay ridiculous amounts of money for his pseudo-products, thus guaranteeing he would continue to do so.

You might ask why you should care about such a situation, especially if, as one would hope, you yourself would refrain from purchasing them. I will offer two reasons. First, Bill Wilder is dragging ASL’s good name through the mud with what he does. People on gaming sites have even mocked ASLers because there are people willing to spend so much money on such obviously amateurish and low-quality items.

Second, the Wilder pseudo-products are a slap in the face to the many ASL designers and publishers who spend incredible amounts of time and effort to try to create playable, fun, interesting and accurate products for ASL. Contrast the cynical, slapdash efforts of Bill Wilder with the dedication and craftsmanship of people like Tom Morin, Chas Smith, Dave Roth, Bill Cirillo, or many others. These are people who have spent years trying to design quality HASLs; they don’t take an afternoon to slap something together and then “release” it. They are the ones who deserve your money, not Bill Wilder.

On this issue let me say one final word, to those people who continue to purchase Bill Wilder products: YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM. CONTROL YOURSELF. The rats will always come back if you leave cookies on the floor.

The MMP Publishing Problem. The last major theme in 2009 was the near absence of official ASL releases. The year 2009 saw only two official ASL original products come out, both scenario packs (the Turning the Tide pack, which ported some old Squad Leader scenarios into ASL, and Action Pack #5). Moreover, both of these packs were released in January 2009, which meant that ASLers had to suffer through an entire year without another official release.

Alas, this was also a major theme of 2008 and 2007 and 2006 as well. Similar to what occurred in 2009, the year 2008 saw expectations raised with the January release of Valor of the Guards, then dashed as the only other releases that year were Action Pack #4 and a mini-campaign game in Operations Special Issue #1. The year 2007 was even more disappointing, with only one new official ASL product released (Action Pack 3). In 2006, there was the traditional January release (Armies of Oblivion), followed by nothing more than ASL Journal 7 (still the latest Journal published, by the way).

The paucity of new official ASL releases is as perplexing and inexplicable as it is dismaying. Releasing a new ASL item is as close to a sure thing in terms of sales that the entire wargaming community has. Official ASL products sell in greater numbers than most other wargames (even many third party products, with a much more limited market penetration, often sell well). The ASL audience is positively ravenous for product; they have money to spend, and it seems they would rather give it to MMP, if they could, than to a third party publisher. Nor is there a shortage of designers out there. Indeed, one reason why some designers have said they chose to self-publish or to publish with a third party publisher is because they despaired of how long it might take their design to come out if they submitted it to MMP. For loyal ASLers, such a situation could only be frustrating. They want to give MMP their money, if only there were something they could buy.

So here we are again, at the threshold of another January. Once more, a couple of new ASL items seem likely to be released during the month (a new Action Pack and, finally, a new Journal). And after that? Will it be another barren year? One certainly hopes not. In a tacit admission that there was a major problem that needed addressing, in mid-2009, MMP announced that they were hiring Chas Argent as a full-time ASL developer; he started work later in the year. A move long overdue, I think. Not enough time has passed to see if this move will have the effect that ASL players hope it will. I believe Chas certainly has the potential to increase the ASL flow (although there are more issues involved than merely development) and I wish him the best possible New Year, ASL-wise. But my expectations have been raised before only to have them dashed by cruel reality, so I—and all of you—will simply have to hope, wait, and watch. May we all have a happier 2010, in terms of official ASL, than we had from 2009.

The Despies. To end our look back on 2009 on a positive note, I’d like to offer a few semi-official Desperation Morale awards for some of the year’s notable achievements. Let’s call them the “Despies.” I label them semi-official because the reality is that it sometimes takes several years for the true value and worth of an ASL product to be fully understood (as few of us can play all of a product’s scenarios and/or campaign games all at once). To be fairest, these awards should probably be given out in 2012. But I do enough waiting around for ASL products to be released, I don’t need to find other things to wait on. So let’s jump straight to it, shall we? On to the Despies!

Despie #1: Noteworthy Achievement – Publisher. The judges mulled over this one for weeks, and sometimes even slightly postponed episodes of debauchery in order to consider on the matter. Still, I think the most impressive publisher in 2009 was certainly Le Franc Tireur, which managed to release three major ASL products this year, all of high production value. LFT’s St. Nazaire module contained beautiful components and great attention to detail, while its From the Cellar Russian Civil War pack is one of the more original and colorful ASL releases we have seen in some time. Its just-released latest issue of LFT Magazine, issue #12, is flawed somewhat by a just-discovered printing error in the included geomorphic mapboard (the resolution of which has not yet been announced), but nevertheless contains a variety of ASL goodness. What is perhaps most impressive of all is that the main person behind LFT, Xavier Vitry, is a serving French Army officer who has had to coordinate an international coterie of writers, designers, playtesters, artists, and printers, all while stationed in the Caribbean.

Despie #2: Noteworthy Achievement – HASL Release. Another tough decision. I’d say it’s an honor just to be nominated, except that we don’t have a nomination process. While St. Nazaire was certainly well-done, and an obvious runner-up, I’d say the edge actually goes to another geographically Gallocentric product, Critical Hit’s First Wave at Omaha. What is perhaps most impressive about FWaO is that such an ambitious product (though it only covers half of Omaha beach; the other half is coming) was released at all. Over the years, several Omaha designs were started, never to be completed. What is also impressive is the relative simplicity and brevity of the rules. It would be extraordinarily easy for an Omaha HASL to be bogged down in endless special rules and chrome. FWaO, however, does a good job of keeping things straightforward and simple; one does not need to memorize a whole host of additional rules. The maps are attractive, the counters (especially the vehicle counters) somewhat less so. The only real flaw of the scenario is that too many of the scenarios are too small; there aren’t enough meatier scenarios in the mix. There is, however, a huge invasion scenario. It is a product well worth looking at.

Despie #3: Noteworthy Achievement – Scenario Pack Release. The award here probably would have been a tie, had I not resolved that there would be absolutely no tied results in the very first Despies, no matter how hard it was for us to make up our fragile little minds. So let me announce first the very, very close runner-up, the Swedish Volunteers Pack, which was a fine and impressive achievement all around. Action Pack #5 was also nice. But the actual award goes to—well, heck, it goes to some more friggin’ Swedes, because it goes to Friendly Fire Pack #5. Over the course of the past five years, the Friendly Fire Packs have been amassing an ever greater collective reputation. Friendly Fire Pack #5 does nothing to dent it. It is a nice collection of varied, well-designed, and well-playtested scenarios. You really get your money’s worth with these scenarios. What is it with these Swedes? Maybe they have nothing better to do during the long winters.

Despie #4: The Lt. Aldo Raine Achievement Award. The last Despite is a little bit different, as it is intended not to recognize a significant contribution to ASL simply in the last year, but rather each year to highlight a different contributor who has really benefited the ASL community in some way. There are so many potential people and groups to recognize, from tournament directors to designers to podcasters to others, but the inaugural Lt. Aldo Raine Achievement Award goes to Vic Provost and his Bunker Crew for their sterling work in producing the Dispatches from the Bunker newsletter. It is hard to sustain any hobby newsletter over the long-term, and all who have done so deserve acknowledgment, but Dispatches from the Bunker goes further and includes fully playtested scenarios in each and every issue. It has been coming out for so long that sometimes it seems in danger of being taken for granted, but here in the hallowed halls of Desperation Moraledom, we definitely don’t take it for granted. And that is why we think Vic and the Bunkerites deserve the Aldo Raine award.

On that pleasant note, I’d like to finish by wishing everyone in the ASL community across the world a happy, healthy, and safe New Year. May all your opponents point out your SAN, may none of your Critical Hits be duds, and may all of your ASLOK opponents be well-groomed and well-behaved. I hope you’ve enjoyed the inaugural column of the Desperation Morale Blog.